bleakcon

Almost withyou exception this has been the journey every player of this game has had.

I came in to this game pre .23 and I can tell you I had a blast, it was great fun and there seemed to be a fair few people playing, sure, it wasn't perfect but I at least had fun creating a factory, figuring out what I needed, visiting other planets and searching for resources etc. 

Then came .23, ok, wasn't the best, schematics sucked but I built up a collection, I continued building ships and planning infrastructure for a guild.

Then came the missions, I was a whale, I played that shit and made billions, it was weirdly fun optimising ships for bringing a lot of packages out of orbit, for optimising the space-based ship to have exactly enough fuel to get out of pipe and then get to the destination, drop those packages onto a atmos ship and land, then of course refill and go again.

It kept me interested for a bit until I saw the playerbase dwindle, I saw NQ floundering about achieving very little and simply promising to communicate more and to 'deliver' more.

Fast forward more than half a year and the vast majority of changes have not been to improve gameplay but to turn this into a game that you pay for monthly but log in once a day for a few hours to do 'your dailies' and it stinks of them trying to save on costs.

At about the same time they did the 'mining overhaul' they raised the sub price for a beta game which to me was just salt in the wound.

Now they are limiting number of cores.

Things they have done which are actually good: An additional tool for building (great but so much more is needed: multi-core support? the ability to take down a core and stash it in a container?), Cleaning up markets (let's not pretend this isn't also for making a saving on the server side).

As you will likely accuse me of (with just cause) being bitter, let me remind you that I and many others have watched a game with promise and potential slowly degrade in playerbase and even features, with the new features primarily for reasons of them realising just how unscaleable their tech is and all the while charging us more for their mistake.

So nope, I don't hold out the most hope for this game, I can't imagine they can keep this game in beta for too long and if they can't complete the following list in its entirety before launch I don't see it taking (that is sad because i really do love this game and it is because of that I am unwilling to hope because I can see it going the way of the dinosaur)....anyhow that list:

1. massive pvp overhaul, it is the worst pvp in any game I have ever seen, I see they were trying to do some kind of eve-esque gameplay but it isn't even close, eve pvp can actually be really fun.
2. make planets more diverse.
3. give purpose to building other than just storage for factories/containers.
4. rethink the automining calibration mechanic, it is hot garbage.
5. add a tool to:
  a. take down a core and move the components of that core into containers.
  b. allow players to see what a core looks like before putting it down, currently moving multi-core structures is like pulling teeth.
  c. some way of figuring out what angle something is (even if it is just 45/90/135/180 and so on.
6. 'fix' construction of ships - with changes to brakes coming and stacking it is going to be super hard to make something look nice and be functional, we shouldn't have to choose.
7. add a mechanic to track ships further than just 2SU, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack and it isn't fun, bonus: add this mechanic and then add ways to construct ships which are 'stealthy'.
8. Add addtional ship parts, examples: XL wing variants, XL atmos engines, brakes with vastly superior stopping power (at the cost of fuel), oh and fuel - combustiable fuel - when I have a suit which lets me fly into space and enter a planets atmosphere with no issues? Yeah parts that use other sources of power which are higher tier and much more expensive to lose.
9. Add a cost to AGG and make the thing less mind numbingly boring to use (make it go up faster)
10. review sub warp speed cap, 30k is bs, no one wants to do missions taking them 5 hours of afk for a few mill, players should be able to exceed this cap and pay for it in fuel and ship design.
11. add power.
 
I went a little ott but I do think 90percent of this stuff needs looking at and addressing before they can look forward to a player base that makes this game a sustainable business.

I hope they succeed but the track record isn't there and their motivations as of late have been solely focussed on sorting out their lack of planning and foresight from the past.
 

Coming from someone who (when they played at least) did missions on a large scale this!

Mission issues basically include:

1. Missions on their own are not worth the time investment but they are super scaleable so if you have multiple accounts then they become worth it, I whaled and had over 20 accounts.
2. Even with the scaling they are objectively boring, there is absolutely nothing to do once you load your ship with 20 odd packages and set in the auto pilot.
3. All this being said it's quite the tedious grind: logging in 20+ accounts *2 and clicking all the buttons is at best boring and at worst a good way of getting RSI.
4. If there were to be any gameplay involved it would literally be making sure you are way off of pipe and setting up your ship so that it contains the optimal amount of fuel (what I found I had to do was to have enough fuel on board to burn to get off of pipe and then burn to my destination, offload and then just enough to burn back. I needed this to be refined so I could slow down 'quickly' when approaching drop off (minimising risk of getting popped) and to be as light as possible entering atmos further allowing me to carry less atmos fuel) and of course ensuring I always had a steady stream of space fuel. I almost got as far as to creating two space stations and dedicated space hauling craft but quit before I went that mad.

The sad reality of missions is they are an exercise in being afk for x amount of time for y amount of quanta at the cost of z amount of fuel. There is no skill aside from ensuring you are off pipe, I suppose you could bring a bunch of gunners with you and some escorts and really scale the operation up, which might generate some pvp but in reality it is a very boring game of cat and mouse which is only worth it if you play the system by creating multiple accounts.

Looking at the bigger picture I simply see DU going in the direction of a mobile game e.g. log on, calibrate, wait, log off with most of the actual gameplay in space, my personal take is that this is to keep those server costs down.

Now that I have started my ramble, it feels to me like that last couple of updates have been solely about reigning in the costs to NQ and not remotely about gameplay, in fact, gaemplay has objectively gotten waaay worse with many of these updates, the salt in the wound is the increase in sub fees.

It is a shame, I want to like this game, I actually like the ship building systems, I like piloting ships out of atmosphere, I do find that fun and feel like that is a solid foundation (minus the stacking etc which I see is on the roadmap to fix) but that is not the foundation they are building on, instead it stinks of a company that is trying desperately to scale a game they are realising is not all that scaleable in its previous, or even current state.
 
/rant
 

I don't know, when a company has to up prices in a beta it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that we will all be leaving sooner or later.

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

Whilst I agree with your pragmatism (that if this game is to continue then player numbers either need to be high or the sub needs to be high) I would say the reason they are not attracting many new players is because their game lacks anything remotely rewarding for the new player, it only becomes rewarding if you like to horde wealth or make things, both of which aren't going to bring in the numbers needed to make this game sell.

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

The trouble is, everything in this game is a kind of 'fire and forget' daily, even missions; get into orbit, move off the pipe, let autopilot handle it.

Mining is: babysit via a minigame, wait for the next day

Asteroids: only during the weekend......

Suddenly players who were taking server costs mining, just log in, calibrate and then log off, occasionally take their ore somewhere.

Currently no benefit to playing the game at all...
 

The trouble is, everything in this game is a kind of 'fire and forget' daily, even missions; get into orbit, move off the pipe, let autopilot handle it.

Mining is: babysit via a minigame, wait for the next day

Asteroids: only during the weekend......

Suddenly players who were taking server costs mining, just log in, calibrate and then log off, occasionally take their ore somewhere.

Currently no benefit to playing the game at all...
 

The trouble is, everything in this game is a kind of 'fire and forget' daily, even missions; get into orbit, move off the pipe, let autopilot handle it.

Mining is: babysit via a minigame, wait for the next day

Asteroids: only during the weekend......

Suddenly players who were taking server costs mining, just log in, calibrate and then log off, occasionally take their ore somewhere.

Currently no benefit to playing the game at all...
 

If I were to come back to this game I have billions in quanta and billions in assets, I do not need to do a single thing, the game would be boring. 

I would actually be interested if there was a wipe......

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

I don't know, when a company has to up prices in a beta it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that we will all be leaving sooner or later.

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

I must be honest I never gave it much thought having not seen what it was like before but when you showed the pictures I would choose the dark....more realistic space in a heart beat.

For what it's worth it has my vote.

Maybe that needs to change, perhaps we should have a mechanic that allows for deconstruction of items to their base ores with some loss. That way people can sell below market price all they like (probably the crowd that mines their own ore....so you know, the ore is free right  ) can do that but those who notice this trend can take advantage of it

"Gee, the dodgy field effects around the hand tool really need dialing up to 11"?

Do the DU coders have ANY IDEA how difficult it is to precision-place things with the tool and that arred lighting effect taking up over half of the width of the screen and not only encroaching upon but actually obscuring the workspace?
Do they even care?
 
Here's me trying to precision-place a bunch of L glass... it's a fckn nightmare.. I think I prefer mining at this point.

I think you need to educate yourself on what socialism actually is before making oddball suggestions like this.

That is something NQ should have had the solution for, before they even wrote a single line of game code..

Definitely not surprised regarding the OP's statement, why?
 
Let's go back to 0.23 release when the **** really hit the fan in my opinion.
 
So 0.23 saw the release of schematics and the reception to these changes were lukewarm at best.
 
The issue was never really the schematics, the vast majority of players understood and even welcomed the addition of schematics as an IDEA.
 
The implementation of the idea though was fedback as being awful, the first issue was with the prices of the schematics, in response NQ eventually lowered the prices of schematics but this was really just a bandaid, likewise the increase on the daily quanta bonus is a bandaid along with the bot buy orders.
 
It was at this point the game forced mining on players not just to get materials to build things with but to essentially grind massive amounts of quanta for schematics - I have mined just over 1 billion quanta worth of ore whilst watching 3 series including SG1, ST: DS9 and SG:Atlantis (hint this mining sim is not fun or engaging).
 
Prior to this players could get away with doing far less mining and could focus on building or coding but by making this change players must now exhaust their time doing something that just isn't fun at all.
 
NQ reasoned that with the addition of the increased daily reward and the doubling of bot buy orders of ore this would provide players a way to progress in the short term.

That isn't what has happened though is it? Instead 7 or so months later we are practically in the same situation as we were back then, what else has been done in that time? 

1. bug fixes
2. performance improvements
 
arguably this is it, from a feature perspective nothing of real value has been added at the time of writing this post.

So what is my point? Simple really, whilst it may be true that 0.23 was a pretty awful thing to add before other play loops were added that isn't really the root issue here.

The root issue is that NQ kept the game in this post .23 state for close to 3/4 of a year, you tell me if they should be surprised that people are fed up after being promised a space game and instead receiving a mining simulator.
 
That's not even the sole big issue though, the other problem is that the communication attempts from NQ are just straight up bad (this is an understatement of epic proportions), we have no timeline, no idea on the state of the company at all (leaving many to speculate) or the future of the game in terms of whether it is going to die due to lack of funding, to add salt to the proverbial wound we get placations in the form of blogs giving us grandiose plans for how NQ has heard our feedback, or how they are going to refactor their processes etc etc in the form of blogs in various parts. 

All of it is just BS, no one wants talk anymore, action action action is what we want.

Sooo for me the game is boring because: 

1. it is a mining sim where you get to play a peasant for a good month or so.
2. the dev loop is unbearably slow, feels like NQ are still trying to ride the rapids of the waterfall rather than moving to a more agile method, I have found this generally happens because deployments are hard or the code isn't as malleable as it should be or a bit of both; this worries me.
3. no idea what the future of DU is so should I grind loads of quanta in the hope it is a success and it becomes fun, bascially allowing me to get a leg up; i expect many people who play relentelessly these days do so in the hope that they will be able to benefit when/if the game becomes fully featured.
4. at this point I don't trust NQ, would not surprise me if they perform a wipe.
5. communication is bad and roadmaps are not a thing so no reason to expect anything.
6. I have had enough of interacting with bots, the whole point of this game is to build the universe with players which isn't what is happening, whole swathes of player made content are removed from the game by allowing players to sell to bots, hauling isn't a thing (at least not to the level it should be), building on other planets isn't a thing because no one knows what the mechanics of TW will be.
 
reduced down to 2 points it is boring because it involves too much mining (if it was SE like mining i would actually find it fun ish) in tunnels with a uninspriing hand tool and no gameplay even around mining and no changes to this in site.