Kruzer

They didn't revamp pvp at all. They just changed the stats on the already existing pvp. 
 
PvP still requires no skill on the gunners part. The only part of pvp in DU that requires skill (still not much skill) is piloting to align tradjectories, but that only affects pirating (shooting unarmed haulers) since you don't need to try that hard to get near someone that is also trying to get near you.
 
PvP needs to be completely redone, not merely changing the stats on guns... As it stands, PvP is just a matter of who has the biggest most expensive ships. No skill in it at all!

@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).  

My few opinions:
 
In the next meta, the biggest ship with the most weapons, engines, and armor will win again. Ships without voxel armor and will play shield will still lose in a balanced match (players and quanta).
 
Fighting at 30,000 km / h is very problematic, not to mention the problems with the server getting out of sync. An L ship should not be faster than smaller ships. These can't have the same firepower or range, but will need to compensate with increased mobility.
Once at 30,000 there is no more strategy.
 
Why not also engage the ships of Dual Universe on a principle of trinity? :
- Mobility (engines, tank ...)
- Defense (voxel and shield)
- Attack (weapons, ammunition, radar)
 
We have to take risks and choose our strategy according to our objectives or our adversaries. The game has to push the players to do it.
 
We must give a strategic role to each category of ship (idea of an example of specialization that could be done, we can also think of hybrids):
- Carrier
- Hunters
- Anti-hunters
- Supply / Cargo
- Radar / electronic warfare option
- Destroyer
- Cuirassier
- Tractor beam vessel
- Ship with anti-warp
-  ... 
We must force the players not to be able to do EVERYTHING. Give us tough choices.

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 only realistic way to make XS and S core ships viable for PVP  is to give them specialized weapons. IE: Torpedoes and Bombs. They should have to carry them as a heavy payload. They should be limited to small numbers of ammunition. This does 2 things. It gives the smaller core ships SOME value in PVP Combat. It forces larger core ships to equip some smaller weapons more capable of hitting the smaller ships.

Not every person interested in PVP wants a battleship.

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

@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).  

Critical thing here -- RE-LAUNCH. Because DU life/death level need to have it strongest way possible, considering population issues. It means placating newcomers (this ideally large, "last hope" wave) to fullest. Even by sacrificing small number of vets (sound cynical, yes). Re-launching with 3 years baggage its serious weakening of game attractivity, because, by my experience, people in such games both like to start fresh and hate to start behind (and no wiping means they will start deep in ass behind).
 
I had this argument 1000 times here, when people "but in MMOs you new players always behind vets, and what..." 
 
Difference here lies in situation when DU criticly dependant on this re-launching crowd. Ones who slowly come later, sure, who cares, its another matter.
 
I honestly loosing any hope someone understands me on this, beyond their agression about loosing their stuff.
 
 

I would support a wipe if I thought that would in any way fix the game. But it won't. The problems with DU are MUCH, MUCH more fundamental then a wipe.

There are areas levels of wipe. 
 
1 - Terrain+ore
2 - Constructs+container contents+territories
3 - Quanta+Orgs+missions
4 - Talents
 
In my opinion the current ore model is unsustainable. We cant expect ppl to spawn on planets full of holes and have a good game experience. 
So i would say that wipe 1 (terrain and ore) is 100% garantied. 
 
With so many bugs and exploits, it would be fair to do a full quanta and construct wipe to make every one star from zero. Not even leaving "magic" blueprints. 
 
But i would also agree with a full wipe at release date ( drop database level) 
With everything you wiped, (including talent points) 
 
 
 

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

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. 
  

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

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.............

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.

About a year ago I fell in love with DU's tech and the promise. Launched my organization (DIA) with the beta. I have grown it to a relevant proportion. I then left the game due to what's basically a lack of content. This devblog series does not rekindle my hopes for the game. Here is what I think about the game's current state and my open letter to NQ and response to the devblogs.
 
Is DU a Tech Demo, a Beta, or a Full Launch?
 
Dear NQ,
 
A fundamental thing about why this game is losing so much momentum is you calling a tech demo a beta, then expecting players to actually play it like a fully launched game.
 
From a game mechanics perspective, Dual Universe is a tech demo. The only sustainably enjoyable and interesting gameplay has been construct building. Most playstyles this game should have been featuring are out of balance, boring, or nonexistent. Player support is a nightmare. The game regularly experiences bugs and exploits most of which affect the universe and enjoyment of all players, not just the ones who interact with the bugs.
 
From the your official perspective, DU is a beta, because you wanted to be able to charge the players for the game, yet make drastic changes to the game without angering the playerbase.
 
But from the player perspective, DU is a fully launched game, because you are letting players accumulate wealth, experiences, organizational structures; and carry it over to the actual launch. Let me explain why this matters so much.
 
Why Would People Play DU?
 
Your failure to recognize the fact that this game isn't a beta for the player showcases a fundamental lack of appreciation on why people play single shard sandbox games. People do not and will not play DU for the immediate experiences of mining, building, industry, ship flying, or PvP.  Your main problem isn't the immediate "gameplay loops" that the players are put into. These are not the primarily outstanding features of DU gameplay. There are much better games out there for each. I could play Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous if I was super into spaceship flying. I could play Satisfactory for a way better version of DU's experience of industry. Literally any game has better PvP than DU. 
 
[I exclude construct building from the above list of activities as it is pretty high level compared to games of similar nature, such as Minecraft. And guess what; it's your most time-invested and early-developed feature.]
 
We are early adopters of this game, because we want to play a game which we don't just log in and do our favorite activities, but we also want a game in which doing these activities matter in the context of the greater sandbox universe. The ore I collect could fuel a war. The PvP I do could save or collapse an organization. The ship or LUA I designed can be adopted by thousands of players, ultimately be used to tremendous ends. The factories I build could be the backbone of my space empire. We are here waiting for this emergent content to emerge. We are want to get ahead, be relevant, be famous, be helpful in our different ways in this universe. We want to be a part of something greater. That's what a single shard sandbox is about. The fact that whatever you are doing matters in a greater scheme of things, is why we are playing this game. This is also why game changes, exploits, lack of support and lack of content matters so much.
 
The Frustrations
 
We cared about playing in the context of a greater, living universe. So we sucked up the broken mechanics and the lack of content, and started seriously investing our time in DU. This is because if we didn't, we'd have fallen behind. In other words, we had no choice but to treat this game as a full launch in our time investment decision, because otherwise we'd be punished with respect to why we are playing the game. You basically forced yourself into a position which you constantly frustrate players, because you gave them a tech demo but pushed them to play as if it was a full game. Let me elaborate on concrete examples.
 
The vast majority of specific frustration cases in DU can be categorized into three.
 
Firstly, there are game design changes that invalidate people's hours. The industry patch, screen updates, and every other perhaps much-needed change that would invalidate hundreds of hours of people's time. Now since the game is mechanically a tech demo, you want to be able to make drastic changes. But since people play it as a fully launched game, they commit their full selves and do become frustrated when major changes that are very much necessary invalidate hundreds of hours of their time.
 
Secondly, there are bugs, exploits, and lack of support. People derived truckloads of money and benefits off them (e.g. the blueprint market bug, the initial T4-T5 bot ore purchases, old broken industry, and lots more). People who didn't get support fell behind (even in DIA we lost a warp beacon, and we didn't have DRM ownership of our factories due to the lack of support). These exploits and broken gameplay elements aren't things that you can shrug off when you fix them, because their repercussions in the DU universe (aka the illegitimate wealth people acquired, etc.) carry over even into the actual launch. And you didn't (in most cases couldn't) address that in most cases. You didn't remove the profits earned by the exploiters of the blueprint bot order fiasco, for example. When players earn billions off bugs and exploits, that makes the rest of us who has to do legitimate work to earn that income invalidated. That's game-breaking, because again, most of our enjoyment of DU derives from our activities in the context of the greater DU universe than just the activities themselves. Again, you launched a tech demo in which you didn't have the manpower to do cleanups (e.g. deleting the income) after exploits, and players playing it as a full game pay the price.
 
Thirdly, there is the lack of content because the game is underdeveloped. The path from a tech demo to boredom is pretty self explanatory with this category of frustration.
 
The truth is many players wouldn't have invested that much time and effort in trying to do things that matter in this sandbox, if the game reset once it's properly launched at an acceptable quality. And no, it obviously isn't enough to argue that "players knew that they were going into a beta" because you committed to not wiping the game, including designs. Because, again, people mainly play DU to matter and to be relevant in a universe, and you left them a choice of either falling behind of that goal, or playing a semi-working tech demo.
 
Emergent Content
 
The second big picture issue I see with your decisions is about your views and predictions of how emergent content emerges. Emergent content does not emerge unless the game creates the right conditions for it to emerge. The lack of conflict and content driving mechanics mostly made it impossible for it emerge in DU.
 
[I am saying "mostly", because the one playstyle which is an exception to this is construct building. Great construct creations (although only in looks, not as much in functionality) are the only emergent content this game provides so far. And guess what, the content around this playstyle (ships, stations, expos) are the only thing NQ Twitter can mention daily.]
 
For even a beta, DU should have emerged as many stories in war, piracy, theft, great empires, great trade deals, and so on. These are the kinds of things Eve players should be familiar with. The fact of the matter is that for any other single player experience, there is a better game. But for the emergent sandbox-wide content, DU could have been the best game. Meanwhile, we got JC's "puzzles" which were badly envisioned attempts to generate that content. They were one-time events generating one-time content. They were pretty exclusive in terms of the ratio of DU players engaging with it. They were probably a waste of your devtime. An elaborate "puzzle" is an example of how not to introduce emergent content to your sandbox. True sandbox content is typically unintended, unplanned. 
 
Here are some immediate choke points on the game design which makes it non-conducive to emergent content.
 
Industry: All processes in DU leading up to construct building are fully vertically-integrateable solo (if not with a small organization). If you have 10 people, no reason to not to everything in-house. The game should have been designed from very early on in a way which deep specializations are needed to prevent self-sufficiency. Instead, your "gameplay loop" and "DU shouldn't feel like work" worries pushes you to introduce even more self-sufficiency (aka mining units). In a true sandbox people who don't want to mine would have other opportunities of value generation to buy the ore. Moreover, this is a bad case of "listening to players". Most players have no idea what makes an overall high quality sandbox. A builder will just want free materials to build. That doesn't mean that's a good implementation for a sandbox MMO.
 
Trade: JC's allergy to API, ESI and such removes huge depth from trading for the sake of trading.
 
Organization-Building: There is no value organizations can provide to members which they couldn't have gotten elsewhere. There is no service and value-generator members couldn't have gotten elsewhere unless they join. And inversely, there is no reason why members should pay "taxes" or invest in their organizations. Thus, there is no point in creating a deeply structured organization. Anything can be done better as 1 or 2 dedicated players, without all the hassle of people management.
 
Consensual PvP:  There is no structure in which players can find PvP. Solo PvP isn't even viable (at least to most who don't use remote controllers) when 2 players can man an L core that can one-shot your ship. It is a huge deal-breaker for a sandbox game if one can't hop on their ship and find daily PvP at their small time window. Frankly I don't see how you will be able to circumvent this problem in the next year or years. The devblog certainly does not provide an answer here.
 
Organizational PvP: Can be summed up as "nothing to fight over". Even if you introduce territory warfare, huge mining and resource distributions revamps will ne required to make territories worth fighting over.
 
Non-Consensual and Asymmetric PvP: Piracy is near-impossible because avoiding potential pirates is easy. There is no mechanical depth to generate a meaningful risk/reward space in which some players die to pirates, but not in a game-disabling fashion. Similarly, there are no asymmetric (big org vs. small org) opportunities for the same lack of depth. 
 
No PvE Content:  You don't seem to have money for any.
 
No Exploration Content: You don't seem to have interest for much. One can do construct and planet exploration, but it gets old pretty fast without any reward. Moreover, exploration gameplay was a very low hanging fruit to generate right at the beta launch. Just sprinkle some exclusive rewards in a manner which someone roaming regularly would find these rewards at least once half an hour (and this is how you botched shipwrecks).
 
The Trajectory of the Game and DU as an Ecosystem
 
Reading the devblog does not excite me about the future of the game and on whether you learned meaningful lessons. Emergent content will not emerge unless you begin thinking about Dual Universe as an ecosystem. In a single shard sandbox, playstyles and activities should be interconnected in an ecosystem of relations. Yes, you do seem to realize that there is a lack of content, conflict driving mechanics, and more "sand in the sandbox". You don't however, seem to appreciate the role this interconnectedness plays in generating content. 
 
For example, you want to implement space mining, but you don't think about the demand-side. Ore itself is only valuable if there is demand for it. The lack of PvP losses, the availability of ore in safe-zone players, in the market, and in people's long term stashes won't make ore worth fighting over. So you need new things with demand. And even when you meet this challenge, you have to solve the n+1 problem. For players, the optimized way of engaging with big-reward mechanics is creating consortiums and monopolies. Good conflict drivers involve inherent game designs against these. There is nothing for example, that yields advantages to smaller fleets of ships over larger fleets in DU PvP. This example illustrates how sandbox conflict drivers are supposed to be grounded on mindful and deep PvP mechanics, as well as meaningful balance of risk/reward to drive the conflict and the fun. It is unfortunately predictable that you will put some ore (or new items) to PvP space, and wait for people to sustainably fight over them, which won't happen. The nature of the reward and the nature of the PvP to obtain the reward are as much inherent to content emergence as the placement of the reward.
 
I have a pessimist prediction, because any earlier game design decisions involving ore distribution to planets and hexes, territory scanning, bot orders, industry flows, etc; indicate a similar lack in conceiving Dual Universe as a single interconnected ecosystem. Earlier decisions could have easily generated a more meaningful distribution of value to territories (the most valuable hex is cleared in a day, which is also connected to mining mechanics), things to fight over (if we would have construct PvP on asteroids, there is no reason why we didn't have construct PvP on some planets), exploration (for example, it's not costly to add 10 valuable NPC ships with sub-par AI at a given time to orbits of planets), and so on. Similarly, some future plans show the same lack of appreciation to DU as an ecosystem; such as mining units which will predictably devalue mining by underestimating how much effort players (and botters/RMT'ers) would spend to create big passive income setups.
 
Overall this all just feels like different teams at NQ are given different aspects of the game and they are all implementing their individual designs. There is no wider orchestration from upper level game designers and producers who truly can conceive DU as an ecosystem, and who can appreciate the interconnectedness different systems in the game should exhibit. JC looks like a person who has a great big picture vision, who wants his metaverse, but who does not have the necessary specific visions and approaches to sandbox/ecosystemic game design and development to get there.
 
DU's Project Management and Finances
 
As a final remark, it seems that most of this "lack of content" and the launch decisions could be due to high level decision-making for financial or technological reasons. Perhaps you heavily needed the subscription revenue. Or you needed players to truly commit to the game so you can test the tech. Even if so, the plan seems to have failed. The people who pitched the game to investors should have conducted better expectation management and better financial/business planning. 
 
I am speculating JC was put on the bench for related reasons. If so, then that's perhaps a good call depending on who replaces him. If this is the most you could deliver given the money you have, I don't see how using the same money better would have delivered a timely product. The game might have just needed more money and several years more of development to reach a workable design and launch track. If so, then the responsibility is with those who planned DU and NQ as a business and project model.
 
That said, I hope the investors keep up with it, because I think the initial promise of the game (provided good future game design) is pretty sound. It might need two years more development and a bigger team though.
 
I'll keep following how the game progresses and I hope it succeeds. I don't find the money I spent on it a waste as I already played hundreds of hours.
 
o7
 
EDIT: Corrected some grammar and sentencing.

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.    

Overall, this is great news a mission system will potentially give players something to do but with the game as it is it may not be enough. 
 
I don't know about pirating missions. There is no pirating in this game just murder.  The combat mechanic is so horrible that basically once you've been targeted/scanned and your warp drive is reset, you are done.  The balance of risks is terrible you can lose weeks of work mining ore and getting a large hauler just to lose it to some guy who slapped some guns on a box.  On the other side, killing another ship is basically just getting into range and button pushing.  The only real purpose of "combat" in this game is basically just a harmless outlet for psychopaths.
 

That will all depend.. It's not as easy as that.
 
We'll need to see if the mechanic NQ is going to be implementing over the next year or so (I expect) wil bring anything not already being provided by players as in general, the purpose NQ sees for this mechanic is coming in too late  as players have already set it up themselves and for new players it will hardly be feasible to take hauling contracts when they first need to get a ship.. which takes money .. which for them will mean to go mining. my hauler can make a good living out of hauling as it is, he does not need the mission system for that.
 
But I can see, after the mission system remains mostly unused, how NQ will try and shove it down people's throats anyway as they think it is the one thing that will glue everything together and save the game.
 
What NQ needs to do is get out of the way, do what they set out to do, which is to create and provide the sandbox, and add a proper API so players can then fill in the blanks, creating tools and apps that can be used to make the game work. If NQ would just let us play the game and focus on fixing bugs and overall making sure the server and backend runs as it should , not in the ductaped together state it is now. 
 
 

As I've thought about it, I've basically come to the conclusion that the mission system is too little, too late.  The destruction of industry in the last patch basically resulted in mining being the major activity in the game.  For me personally this means by the time the mission board drops I'll be sitting on about a billion quanta or so.  So, hauling some one else's cargo for a relative pittance  isn't going to provide much incentive.  Folk's building and selling ships at the moment also don't seem to be suffering much difficulty in sourcing elements or other parts for those ships.
 
There needs to be more to do in the game.  At this point the only feature I see is an over haul of the combat system to something that doesn't completely and utterly suck and to give it a meaningful purpose like territorial conquest rather than just a means for some wanker to get his jollies ruining someone's day.
 
 

I doubt "it's not the rapist fault he's a rapist". Or, "the pretty girl shouldn't have been walking alone" are very solid moral or legal defenses.
 
The idea that haulers need to engage in an arms race is also a joke. Both in terms of logic (there is no example historically of pirates being in ships that could go toe to toe with top of the line military vessels)  and in game where even in a decked out hauler, combat is basically predetermined by load out or at best a button pushing race.  So basically at best you have a player being forced to participate in an aspect of gameplay that is neither fun or profitable just so some bent character can get his rocks off. 
 
It's not really about choice of game play it's more about a poorly developed combat mechanic that doesn't really give players much choice.  As a pirate there isn't much choice but to be a murder hobo and as a hauler there isn't much choice other than to completely avoid combat.  

So where's the risk for 'you pirates'.  You go out and mug a freighter and then return to your 'pirate base' which is 'under police protection' in the Safe Zone.  I have to laugh at a pirate complaining that a player can get rich by just 'pressing two buttons'.  There is no activity in the game for which 'getting rich by pressing 2 buttons' is a better description of, than it is for piracy.  Make it fair... indeed.  

Overall, this is great news a mission system will potentially give players something to do but with the game as it is it may not be enough. 
 
I don't know about pirating missions. There is no pirating in this game just murder.  The combat mechanic is so horrible that basically once you've been targeted/scanned and your warp drive is reset, you are done.  The balance of risks is terrible you can lose weeks of work mining ore and getting a large hauler just to lose it to some guy who slapped some guns on a box.  On the other side, killing another ship is basically just getting into range and button pushing.  The only real purpose of "combat" in this game is basically just a harmless outlet for psychopaths.
 

So where's the risk for 'you pirates'.  You go out and mug a freighter and then return to your 'pirate base' which is 'under police protection' in the Safe Zone.  I have to laugh at a pirate complaining that a player can get rich by just 'pressing two buttons'.  There is no activity in the game for which 'getting rich by pressing 2 buttons' is a better description of, than it is for piracy.  Make it fair... indeed.