Kruzer

Well, the big benefit for you is that after two years, your friends have probably gotten over their anger at you and have started taking your calls again.

The fundamental issue that a lot are missing is the combat in this game sucks. It is shallow and boring. And the addition of asteroids kept that tradition alive with the hunt for asteroids being boring and needlessly time consuming. Now there is another game out there for us to compare to and there is no comparison. It is actually shocking considering DU has been in Beta for a year. The added nail, I don't have to bleed a monthly sub to be bored while the dev figures out what they want to make.

It's absolutely forced. Ok not if you're only definition of 'force' is with violence. But making packages cancel the ability warp is attempting to force PvP encounters and is a short cut in game design to try to get players to participate in it. Having an alarm bell go off on asteroid discoveries is again a forced game element to artificially drive PvP. Asteroids are a temporary resource that are neither long lived enough or large enough to result in large scale Org vs Org conflict. Look, there is a big chunk of the player base that doesn't find the combat mechanic very compelling. Target locking involves no skill and is a back ground calculation as is hit (or miss) location as is damage. That's likely due to technical limitations of the server, so be it. The only way you are going to get more players involved is to expand the role of combat/conflict in the game. We'll see what asteroids does for the game but I everything that I've heard about asteroids indicates that their purpose had a lot more to do with alleviating server issues caused by planetary mining. If so, that is very bad news for the introduction of a new system. So granted I have a bias about asteroids because I believe that the introduction of a new system with zero safe zones is one of the few things that will save this game. But, yes I could be wrong. Maybe the current PvP orgs have enough of a player base to sustain the game.

The people that don't engage in PvP now are for the most part people that don't like the mechanic. 'Balancing' shields and honeycomb is going to do nothing to convince them to partake. Cheap game design to try and force PvP like idiot anti-warp packages for missions and system-wide APBs on asteroids (imagine in the gold rush a prospector finds the mother load and his first stop in town is the saloon where he loudly brags about his find and it's location saying he'll be headed to claim office the very next afternoon....). Do the hard work of proper game design to encourage PvP, like territory and resource control and people will hold their nose at the crappy combat mechanic and take part. Orgs will put together large groups to compete for those resources. Game design that FORCES PvP in order to merely access a couple of KL of T3 ore will just drive players from the game.

Neither is a good comparison of the DU road map. Both have streets mapped out one is just a lot more sparse. The DU road map would be analogous to a list of street names with no graphical representation to their layout or intersection with other streets. Something like this; First Ave, Main St, Young St., Memorial Ave., Southview Blvd., Northview Blvd.,,.... Coming early summer; 2nd Ave, Service Road and River Road!

No I already showed it. You simply failed to read it. The mission system resulted in a big increase in the amount of quanta in the game. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. Very quickly after this quanta dump, prices in the market rose due to this inflation in the quanta supply.

As far as I know, AC is still around. It is the splinter group, mainly ATOM and the other PvP focused orgs that have renamed themselves Legion. The only 'shard of Law' in the system is Aphelia, who's magic keeps planetary surfaces and the space around Alioth, Madis, and Thades immune to weapons fire.

@NQ At some point you will have to decide what kind of game you are making. Are you making a creative mode game for people to build their sand castles? If so, wipe nothing and you're pretty much done. If you are still intent on making the game you advertised where the game is driven by large scale player interaction then you will have to wipe everything completely and you are going to have to make serious changes in the game. Safe zones completely fly in the face of such a game. Resources and territory ownership are things that should have to be defended. The idea that major resources (mega-nodes for example) or prime real estate can be defended by a mere TU negates the need to form an org for defense or the need for orgs to interact through conflict or treaty to divide those resources. If you want piracy then pirates need more tools to give options beyond the complete destruction of their targets. This would make haulers more open to piracy if encounters didn't always lead to a total loss. Piracy also needs to carry some in game consequences. Without safe zones, the price of piracy is living on the run or forming large pirate alliances. Now you can pillage a hauler and then camp safely in your base within the safe zone. Also, elements should be not be repairable. The idea that a small pirate ship can pirate a meganode worth of ore by simply field repairing a totally destroyed hauler is nonsense. If a pirate org wants such a heist they need to decide either to attack as a group and bring their own hauler or only disable the target hauler and take it over. At a certain point, total destruction should mean a total loss of the ship and cargo (this isn't possible in the current game).

I only disagree with you on this. The streamer environment is a negative indicator. Viewer count has cratered as have the number of streamers. Gotchar wasn't a big streamer, he might be now but he wasn't compared to Markee who's left and Gaming Gothic who's also left. Even Shamsie was bigger than Gotchar. Even those that return have streamed on a less frequent basis than before. The Twitch presence of DU has declined, how meaningful that is to the state of the game is debatable but, to present the DU presence on Twitch as improving or an indicator of vibrancy is pretty unrealistic.

It stands for air conditioning. Eternal's conked out again.

Yes, it is stupid simple and the cost of carrying it out is the extra time it takes to get off the 'pipe'. So? I'd have to be an idiot not to use it as it is the only means to offer reasonable assurance that weeks of work isn't undone. Look, if the dev wants me to engage in combat than they should be making it interesting enough for me to want to participate in it. I'm not opposed to PvP at all but there has to be a point to it or like in Elite Dangerous, the combat mechanic has to be interesting enough to make me want to engage in it despite there being no larger purpose. (I'm not saying combat in DU needs to be like ED just using it as an example). Rigging the game to try to force players into PvP is just wrong and ultimately is more likely to result in players leaving the game (which is really good for no one). This actually made me laugh. We could have a whole discussion on the devs living up to what we were sold on. You said it in your last sentance. If you were right in the first part of this point, the surface of planets outside the safe zone wouldn't be protected. Hell, if the dev were honest and didn't lie to us the only safe zone would be sanctuary. To be clear, I never assumed you were advocating camping or any other exploiting the only problem I have with you is you trying to FORCE other players to participate in PvP. Nah, that can be done in other ways and it's up to the devs not you to determine that. The mission system and resulting quanta dump would indicate that you and the dev's thoughts are not aligned on this. No I don't think so, you are creating an alternate reality where a hauler would even care (or the combat mechanic be interesting enough for them) to go hunt down and loot a pirate. Also, in order to 'fight back' a hauler would also have to equip his ship with the same expensive Rare XL manuevers and rare weapons. And you are ignoring the days or weeks spent going down the drain on the hauler side. Not important enough for me to bother clarifying. You can't have it both ways. NQ isn't considering foiling the off pipe strat so you are wasting our time. Maybe trying to make your case without denigrating so called 'Safers' would be more effective? Look, I find the combat mechanic to be awful and there would seem to be a lot of players that feel the same way. Your approach of getting hostile towards them rather than suggest ways to make combat more interesting isn't constructive. It's more than likely that even if you were to successfully lobby NQ to rig the game to force players into combat, they'd just cancel their sub and leave. Which is fine if you feel there is enough interest otherwise to keep the game afloat. Yes it is dead and I have no faith that NQ will fix it or, if they do it will be too late. I actually agree with you about the theory. But, in the state of the current game I don't believe piracy has a place. Ironically, while this sounds anti-piracy, my argument is that 'piracy' needs an expanded role. In the current game 'piracy' is closer to murder hoboing or griefing. There it is completely binary there is no option to surrender or discuss terms. There is no option to disable and loot some cargo it's just about murder and a total loss for one side. Anyways, good luck with your lobby. If you are successful in your efforts and there is no improvement in the game play, maybe I'll give you my stuff. A bit of a pyric victory.

No I don't think I should be exempt. I'm almost never in the safe zone and haul between planets constantly. In order to avoid the loss of a ship and weeks of work, I take measure to reduce the risk of that happening. Currently that involves staying off the pipes. Slapping a gun on my ship will do nothing against a purpose built ship. The only sense of entitlement is coming from degenerates like you who think the game should be played according to how you think it should be played and all others should be forced to play according to your warped vision of who is justified to access what resources. Or, that because you want to pirate you are entitled to targets. Not asking for an easy kill? The minute a hauler is caught in range there is no escape unless they are intercepted close to the safe zone the only other means of escape is sheer incompetence of the pirate. The warp drive is easily perma-locked and the new update will put out a system wide APB when an miner finds an asteroid. PvP is a game feature not a requisite, the idea that someone who doesn't like PvP should be forced to participate in it is as absurd as forcing a ship builder like D4nk Knight or the Captain's Customs guy to mine. Serious questions; 1. Why is piracy good for the game? Why is the lack of 'booty' bad for the game? 2. A miner/hauler is risking a hours of work and millions of quanta what is the pirate counter wagering? 3. I'll agree that there is RP value to the 'outlaw life' in a game but how does that jive with the presence of an all seeing entity overseeing the reconstruction of a society? 4. Shouldn't the life of an outlaw involve life out side the law? Shouldn't a life of crime mean no access to the safe zone (Alioth, Madis and Thades) and the protection it affords? 5. Why are you only talking about pirating in the context of PvP? There should be plenty of combat opportunities if the number players engaging in PvP is large enough. Ultimately IMO it will be up to the dev to introduce conflict drivers in the game. There will need to be control of resources and territories to fight over. If conflict becomes bigger than just the ship on ship encounter more players may tolerate the combat mechanic to participate in the larger goal.

I hear you. But, your post also reminds me of another small hurdle. In my org, a big number of the players that have quit the game are Alpha backers. They are already bought and paid for, bringing them back in the game doesn't help improve the financial strength of the project. I'm not saying the game is in trouble now but it can't bleed money forever. I got my amusement from the game by exploring/prospecting. Finding that uncommon, or rare mega node setting up a mining base mining it out and transporting it. The game is fast running out of interesting things to discover and asteroids won't fill this void. Risk during hauling isn't exciting to me without some chance for reward to balance the risk of a month of work going down the drain. Give me and my org something to fight for. Imagine a org vs org war of a particularly valuable hex. I'd tolerate the crap mechanic to take part in PvP for that. But, right now a hex with a meganode is only valuable until the meganode is mined and even then, it is made invulnerable simply by the placement of a TU.

I actually agree with you but, my point was they are quitting because there is nothing in the game THEY find enjoyable and this is why they quit. It's great that YOU (and me too btw) still find stuff to do in the game. However, I'm not sure there will be enough "me and yous" in the game to financially support the game without more to do in the game. At this point even I can see a point in the near future were the game will grow stale.

If a quick google search of "Inflation" and "Zimbabwe", "Yugoslavia" or "Weimar" doesn't divorce you of this notion, nothing will.

Utter nonsense. The jump in ore prices was directly due to the large dump of quanta in the game from the mission system. Good god, the prices jumped LESS THAN 48 hours after the missions dropped and minted instant billionaires. This is a classic step change to an obvious input. This is sun in the sky obvious stuff. And, you don't even have to be educated to see it, just not stupid. Yes, there are lots of players that don't want to mine and for months before the missions ore was cheap. The point remains there isn't much else to do in the game. The combat mechanic is ass, and building sandcastles can only amuse for so long. The asteroid update is just the same old planetary mining on a smaller scale. This game needs something to drive conflict, it needs resources or territory to fight over. If there is a reason to PvP beyond just being a dick, PvP activity will rocket regardless of the terrible mechanic.

Oh look, another "whah I want an easy button to get kills thread". If you want a thrill when hauling then take your "armed and armoured beast" and fly the pipe, no one's stopping you. Why should I be forced to at best spend even more time on an hours long haul hoping my voxels outlast some "pirate's" ammo. Or worse, attach a gun to my ship and participate in an ass combat mechanic that's as about as challenging and complex as the board game "Battleship". As for 'Safers', is that your name for so called 'pirates' that all operate bravely from their bases situated in the Safezone?

Automining will not help with players who quit the game. Sure they may say they quit the game because they got tired of hand mining but the real reason they quit was there is nothing else to do in the game that was interesting enough to keep them playing. Otherwise, they would have just moved to that activity rather than quitting the game.

Is there really a need to have players scan 5 times to find an asteroid?? If there is a game play reason for it, I'd be open to it but so far it just looks like pointless time wasting. Also, the problem with your PvP isn't 'balance'. The combat mechanic sucks it's like a throw back to the first generation of a computerised version of dice rolling.

When I see stuff like this I envision the crew of the Titanic trying to decide if they should redecorate the staterooms.

Well, the wipe would be a calculation of trying to focus on bringing back players like you at the expense of being less attractive to new players coming into an already picked to the bones system or a fresh start for many and being somewhat more attractive to a new player having a better choice than a planet that looks like an abandoned ant colony. With the current state of the game the wipe vs no wipe is probably moot. There's actually less content in the game now than when I started in September.

I actually don't mind the 'necro posting'. Hell this game is necro. I'd put up with nothing but necro post here if in game we could get rid of the necrobases, the necroTUs, the necroships, the necro orgs the necro factories.............

I don't think you need to worry about a long term objective for this game.

Seen a few recent Youtube vids on combat in Space Engineers. Don't think I'll be able to stomach pvp in this game unless something drastic happens.

Warp right now is perfectly balanced. The cost of warp cells to haul cargo is significant. Crippling warp just to make it even easier for some psychopath to grief someone is hardly 'balanced'. I fail to see what could possibly be added to the game by doing so.