Filokwarq

RIP Dual Universe. 
 
It was fun while it lasted.
Kind of?
 
I remember accidentally stumbling across a video of Dual Universe, the alpha feature showcase running ~50 minutes long. Boy oh boy was I impressed. In the past I've played things such as starmade, and empyrion, and always loved the idea of a space sci-fi and as a star wars fan myself, always building large scale stuff like star destroyers and blah. As fun as these games were to play, they always suffered from having next to no major interaction in multiplayer. As you can guess, the whole idea of Dual Universe being a space sci-fi sandbox in an MMO setting was an incredibly grand and alluring idea. I had plenty of fantasies and imaginations of how awesome DU could turn out to be, as many many others had too. Unsure of what exactly I can say without breaching NDA, I'll keep it vague. Playing the Alpha build was pretty frustrating lol. However, the community made up for a lot of DU's pitfalls. I had discovered a sort of 'role play' civilisation building community that spanned over years of living under a shell of tight NDA alpha development, which was quite interesting. Everyone was eager for DU to enter beta, and to get serious. To let go of needing to 'Role play' and just be able to take their metagaming to the next level in the persistent world of Dual Universe.

The Beta launch was certainly a real mouthful. Everyone rushed out the gates to make their mark in the world, a race to cement their existence into DU's solar system. Damn were there a lot of people, compared to the current population it's almost unbelievable. Even NQ didn't expect such a huge influx of players to jump in. This caused a lot of dumpster fires during the start of beta, and a lot of NQ's efforts were directed toward putting them out. It was choppy as hell, but it seemed like DU really had a major ingredient to succeed, player population. Regardless of the hugely buggy nature of the game which many people criticized as being no way near beta ready, especially paid beta ready, people still trucked on hopeful of what DU could be. One extremely common phrase among critics and players alike, was that DU had so much potential, and every one of them were right. 
 
With the introduction of larger than alpha resource nodes amongst all of the planets, and meganodes for each ore, DU experienced a huge boost in progression, as everyone grinded their brains out to collect as much ore as they could. Mega factories popping up left and right, in every nook and cranny. Production and resource exploitation at an all time high left NQ worrying about the fast paced progression they seemed to be quite uncomfortable with.
 
The idea behind DU was that it was oriented to group play in such a way that people would build organisations, alliances, countries, and civilisations. Unfortunately, apart from marketing efforts DU wasn't really setup to encourage any of this. Being weary of needing to RP to really do any of this, most older groups began to grow uneasy. The cause for this controversially being the implementation of safezones, and lack of territory warfare, which was a desired addition for the beginning of beta. Initially, the idea was that the only safe place in the solar system would be the Sanctuary moon. The absolute only reason for its current existence. Instead of a creative solution to allow organisations/nations to create their own safezones, their own mark in the solar system, we were given a very, very lenient absolute safe space. In my opinion, the sole existence of any safezones aside from the sanctuary moon works only to remove any incentive or encouragement for a nation or country to emerge in any part of the solar system. Everyone joined into DU with their own dreams, and their own desires of creation. And everyone was very much free to move about and do as they wished, on their own. It's likely NQ were forced along this path due to simply not having enough time to develop critical gameplay mechanics, coupled with problems among the studio itself, with none of the original team who initially worked on DU no longer even working at NQ. DU now has effectively turned itself from a promising civilisation building MMO, into a quiet, enormous and extremely overpriced museum for sci-fi voxel creations.
 
The PVP, and effects of it are nothing short of Pitiful.
 
NQ's move to stifle progression and control it's rate among DU, backfired miserably and completely decimated DU's saving grace, its player population. The introduction of update 0.23 unsettled and enraged SO many people, eesh. If you're reading this and your opinion is that 0.23 was a great patch, you clearly don't see the incredible damage that it's done to DU, NQ, and their PR. Enjoy your giant space museum while it lasts. NQ certainly took a major step back in communication in the aftermath of update 0.23, which only further annoyed the playerbase.

Recently a new Community Manager that went by NQ-Naunet was hired, and made strides in engaging with the remaining DU community. Only just recently, after only 4 months of working at NQ, Naunet has left NQ without a word. Naunet was much appreciated by the community, and her departure left a gaping hole in the communities confidence in NQ's ability to manage a community, sparking a recent freefall dive (absolute shitshow) in NQ's temporarily completely unmoderated Forums, with only NQ-Naerais left to hold the reins on a fragile and wavering community.
 
Another recent incident involving NQ deciding to completely remove ingame support, and discord support has also caused unease and frustration throughout the entire playerbase. Leaving the only form of support to the ticket system, which is famous taking up to a month or more for a response, and often the responses were extremely unhelpful. The removal of NQ's ingame support system basically blew up any players hope for help in navigating DU's buggy and problematic nature.

The ingame support team did an incredible job of handling many of the problems thrown at players, most of which simply made no sense to wait months for. Most of the tech support workers have left NQ after this move.
Their names are:
NQ-Wokk
NQ-Blacksun
NQ-Gallion
NQ-Astratum
NQ-Samaritan
NQ-Stargazer
NQ-Orion
NQ-Reaper
NQ-StarFire
NQ-Xeno
 
Apologies for anyone I've missed, but they've singlehandedly been through the rivers of buggy shit to ensure that players had the best possible experience in DU.\
 
Now that the support team is gone, Naunet is gone, any Liason between community and NQ non-existant, most people just want to see DU put out of its misery. Was a fantastic concept, but it seems like it'll just never work. With the whole idea of DU having millions of players, but only being attractive to a very niche group of resilient and hardcore players, and the recent decision of NQ, DU has just lost it's much needed momentum, and as we can see with numbers pulling out of NQ's roster, including more prominent and notable names, faith in NQ's ability to deliver DU as advertised, promised, and pitched, are at an all time low.
 
Even JC's in rough shape after 0.23, poor dude.
 

 
As for JC himself, mad respect for the dude. Starting a brand new company to develop and handle his dream game (as was ours), was bold and brave of him. We all wished him the best in his endeavours, and are all sad to see what is to come of DU.
 
If you're new and wanting to get into DU, I'd advise against it. If you have friends to play with and wanna muck around DU, all power to you. DU isn't really that pricey, probably won't last for another 3 months anyway.
But for anyone looking for what DU was pitched as, it's looking like a hard skip. 

And now some random memes to dust off the post.


 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


RIP, nobody wanted you here. Except for maybe your competitors, although they probably feel guilty about it now.

I was a bit surprised by the grimness (sp?) of the discussion. Spacegames seem to have some very devoted people fighting for the topics.
 
Back in the days when I was doing the "Make Concept, Make Business Plan, get Funding"-Thing with my "Babies", I always also thought of it as "product". All my heart was in the Idea and the concept, but I was pretty aware that whatever I do, it will be without success if I dont keep in mind what people want, and how many different playstyles I may see. No matter how passionate and emotional involved youre in a project, if you loose the ability to make a step back and change your point of view to adjust if needed your own view, you are already on the wrong track.
 
This game is funded by VC as well, and by that there is some pressure, yes, but also great freedom if things are going well. People leaving the game shortly after a release, no matter which one, will not look good to investors, so do not meeting timelines or budget-goals. But I would never guess whats is possible in a specific case or not, cause that really depends on the individual relationship with the VC-givers as well as their own situation. If they get in trouble, their investment in you may as well. However, there is always the option for the "next round" as well, but for that you better perform good, to achieve a good price for your shares.
 
I worked with many companies to get them back on track, which was actually part of my job in an earlier life, and many problems we see can have many, and especially maturity-related (that of the organisation ) problems. However, speculating is one thing, but telling NQ what would be better and think of them as people without any plan is something I wouldnt allow me to do, at least not seriously Sometimes Plans dont work out, sometimes you have to try something, and when its done, it just dont works. We saw entire games not being released because their "boring", after years of development.
 
I could talk about this for hours, skills, softskills, organisations, processes, methods, but its your lucky day, I wont. Just want sum it up (in a phrase I really love): Dont use your limited insights as meassurements for the actions of others. If you dont understand what and why, then the first thing to do should be to ask "what could be the reason" and not "they are stupid!"
That doesnt provide better communication, which we all would love to see, but at least it may relax conversations a lot. Especially in understanding why some things are not there yet, and why the gras is always greener on the other side
 
Its is fascianting how fast things escalate in DU-Discussions. Relax guys, relax

? *HUGGGG*

And free Hugs for Naunet as well, at least from me, for the last Post on that one
 
Where is the Hug-Emot ein here?.... darn?

Additionally, as this thread was shared internally I have received a response regarding the validity of the claims presented here: "I can confirm that we did not pay anything. We're not even in contact with this journalist."
 
This publication created a feature without our involvement, and it's clear to anyone reading that they're not up to speed on what's actually happening inside of Dual Universe as of 2021-02-16. ?‍♀️

Feel free to disregard the article, or just enjoy it for a laugh if you'd like.

Frankly speaking: whats the problem? Thats how it works today. The Problems I have, especially as EU-Citizen, is how its handled. Influencer have to tag their stuff as ad when they get paid for, even if its  not money, and even if they are not paid for it but hope to get paid someday etc... You can see a lot of trials in the past 2 years here in Germany.
 
The Thing that concerns me on the marketing side is that it looks like this is the only channel they use, and from other companies we know that it does not work out that well if you fokus on people who wants to build up their community with your product and you dont have people with a community promoting yours. However, this is a magazine, not a streamer or influencer, I expect professional standards for journalism, even if the magazine as such is driven by "experts", the quality so far on other games is good. Reading something like that was a real surprise for me.
 
So far, I dont feel valued as a customer, or even informed, through those channels. And for me it does not matter if Articles like these are paid/Arranged by NQ or not: It just feels like someone is joking on me and other people by telling them BS. This is bad Journalism first, and maybe bad marcom as well, but still, this is a magazine, this is a german publisher, we are not used to stuff like that anymore (it was common last century (and yes, I already lived last century, and I/my former copany even have some sort of history (insides, articles) with that publisher), and it hurts the game, NQ and the magazine.

Frankly speaking: whats the problem? Thats how it works today. The Problems I have, especially as EU-Citizen, is how its handled. Influencer have to tag their stuff as ad when they get paid for, even if its  not money, and even if they are not paid for it but hope to get paid someday etc... You can see a lot of trials in the past 2 years here in Germany.
 
The Thing that concerns me on the marketing side is that it looks like this is the only channel they use, and from other companies we know that it does not work out that well if you fokus on people who wants to build up their community with your product and you dont have people with a community promoting yours. However, this is a magazine, not a streamer or influencer, I expect professional standards for journalism, even if the magazine as such is driven by "experts", the quality so far on other games is good. Reading something like that was a real surprise for me.
 
So far, I dont feel valued as a customer, or even informed, through those channels. And for me it does not matter if Articles like these are paid/Arranged by NQ or not: It just feels like someone is joking on me and other people by telling them BS. This is bad Journalism first, and maybe bad marcom as well, but still, this is a magazine, this is a german publisher, we are not used to stuff like that anymore (it was common last century (and yes, I already lived last century, and I/my former copany even have some sort of history (insides, articles) with that publisher), and it hurts the game, NQ and the magazine.

Ah, my bad. Thought we talk about Release-Time. We got two Media-Echoes in Germany, the PvP-Trrailer and the Release. I myself ignored the PvP-Trailer, but the Beta got some good coverage, impossible to escape if you have a browser

I am in line with most of whats being said in here so far, but getting a boost on Subs before the Release to me sounds more like a natural thing. It was the time the magazines, just like the one we talk about in this thread, had Dual Universe in the news and in Articles, and that leads to follower who want to stay informed if they are interested in the game. I was one of them, so to say.
 
DU was already "sorted out" and became "something maybe interesting" that time for me, because of some things written on the DU-Homepage I thought will be different (and it turns out it will, but thats another story).
 
If there are 400k jumping into beta, I would expect a huge raise in followers on Twitter etc. upfront. If those numbers are correct, which I dont know, havent played the first 4 weeks of alphabeta

https://www.buffed.de/Dual-Universe-Spiel-57410/Specials/6-Monate-Beta-1366842/
 
^^ source article
 
Buffed.de, mostly known for WOW articles, has written a few pieces on DU before, and have been mostly positive. However, I and a few friends saw a part in a translated version of this article that stated something that could bring a set of attention to DU that is not needed at this time, that is until NQ fix their game.
 
1st section: "the world comes alive":
 
"Although the rush was already high at the beginning of the beta phase, more and more players were added over time and slowly but surely filled the world of Dual Universe. That had several positive effects on the game. For one thing, the world feels much more alive now. We no longer only encounter strange players in the central marketplaces of Alioth, the largest of the planets, but everywhere in the universe. Even the tiny moons of smaller planets on the edge of the solar system are now well populated."
 
keep in mind this was written on 02/13/2021, and right now that 3rd sentence cannot be any more wrong, alioth is a ghost town, madis and thades are abandoned, and any other planet besides maybe ion and lacobus have basically no inhabitants. That is all because of .23 and the major screw up NQ had. i might be blowing it out of proportion, but you get the jist'.
 
2nd section: "Large organizations have grown":
 
"But it's not just the individual players that make the world come alive. Giant organizations have been set up and grown over the months. Huge factories that produce spaceships on an assembly line and are operated by dozens of players are not uncommon. Huge freight transporters fly from moon to moon with a crew of several men, buy cheap resources there and deliver them to the many thousands of players who have established their home on Alioth. There is organized trade, a flourishing industry, and the first political intrigues between the largest of the organizations."
 
"giant organizations"... what, like 100-200 active players making up 5 different major orgs? compared to the 30K ish+ we had since launch in total? (in reference to sanc moon tiles), if you go to any market in the game, even the district markets on alioth, they are all dead, no one visits them anymore.
 
3rd section: "Schematics ensure more trade"
 
"The schematics in particular are responsible for the flourishing of trade. In the alpha and at the beginning of the beta, everyone was still able to produce everything, provided they had the resources and had the appropriate industrial equipment built beforehand, is no longer possible. More complex modules, which you cannot manufacture in your personal nanocrafter, but only in industrial plants, now require a so-called schematic. This is practically a set of instructions that you can use to explain to your industrial plant which module is manufactured and how. Without a schematic, even the most sophisticated production line is just a pile of scrap metal. You can get the schematics on the marketplaces for a chunk of the in-game currency Quantas. The more complex the module, the more expensive the schematic. You also need a separate schematic for each system. Anyone who wants to manufacture silicon from quartz in ten melting systems not only needs ten systems, but also ten schematics - which can quickly turn into money in large factories."
 
Excuse me, what? Anyone who has played the game most likely quit over schematics, or permanent destruction. why? schematics are 1. expensive, 2. tedious to setup, and 3. has almost entirely killed production of any goods not tier one. when schematics came out, a 7m item (anti-gravity generator S) had a schematic required to build it worth hundreds of millions, now that schematic is worth 76m as of the time of writing this, 10x the items worth is fair, ok, but the way they implemented them was ridiculous. 
 
you can read more on the article and see for yourself, but here is something i noticed, none of that was labeled as opinion...
 
i have the feeling this was a commissioned article by NQ to Buffed.de, if it was, I read someone say that its illegal by German law to publish paid pieces, however i may be incorrect. (correction, if the article is noty labeled as a sponsored article and its found out to be then it is illegal, no where on the article does it mention sponsorship)
 
regardless of the legality, NQ needs to come clean because if this was paid that is scummy, make me feel like this game was a cash grab.
NQ I'm begging you, come clean and stop hiding that your game is dying, you still have a chance to dig out of the hole you made, please!

I am sorry, but this a BS-Aproach to solve that Problem. It breaks one of the core-element of a player-driven economy.
 
I am not complaining about the schematics as such. I am complaining about the need to buy it form a bot.
 
You should be able to craft them on your own with the nanocrafter. That way it still costs money and effort, but you dont have NPC selling it (and bot is NPC, even if there is no Avatar in the World). That being a significant investment, changing a recipe on a machine could also simply need money for setting up the machine and there a skill to lower those costs would have made more sense instead of hiding them behind a skill were nothing else in the game is hiding behind such a skill-wall.
 
I dont say the mechanic with hiding behind a skill is wrong, it is again simply breaking the way things handled in other areas. If Usage of T2 Engines is not behind a Skill-Wall, such things should not be as well. You should simply get better with skill. Having existing industries needing more mats than higher-tier ones would as well have been a way to deal with this.
 
I am a fan of a schematics-idea, especially if it carries the skill of the person who crafts it, and that way you could have made it to last for n runs, which you may define at crafting and it uses up. But artificially using bots here is the wrond aproach if you have so many other options which would perfectly fit into the philosophy of the game.
 
Star Wars Galaxies had a great aproach to Indrustry-Automation. I was hoping for something like that when people were talking about recipes. The actual implementaion simply sounds to me like yet another way to streamline industry and loose those who like crafting, like me. I support the reason for the change, I am with you on almost everything around that change, just not the way you did it when there are so many ways to do it "the crafters way".
 
Make it craftable, add costs for changing them as maintenance costs modified by skills.

I am sorry, but this a BS-Aproach to solve that Problem. It breaks one of the core-element of a player-driven economy.
 
I am not complaining about the schematics as such. I am complaining about the need to buy it form a bot.
 
You should be able to craft them on your own with the nanocrafter. That way it still costs money and effort, but you dont have NPC selling it (and bot is NPC, even if there is no Avatar in the World). That being a significant investment, changing a recipe on a machine could also simply need money for setting up the machine and there a skill to lower those costs would have made more sense instead of hiding them behind a skill were nothing else in the game is hiding behind such a skill-wall.
 
I dont say the mechanic with hiding behind a skill is wrong, it is again simply breaking the way things handled in other areas. If Usage of T2 Engines is not behind a Skill-Wall, such things should not be as well. You should simply get better with skill. Having existing industries needing more mats than higher-tier ones would as well have been a way to deal with this.
 
I am a fan of a schematics-idea, especially if it carries the skill of the person who crafts it, and that way you could have made it to last for n runs, which you may define at crafting and it uses up. But artificially using bots here is the wrond aproach if you have so many other options which would perfectly fit into the philosophy of the game.
 
Star Wars Galaxies had a great aproach to Indrustry-Automation. I was hoping for something like that when people were talking about recipes. The actual implementaion simply sounds to me like yet another way to streamline industry and loose those who like crafting, like me. I support the reason for the change, I am with you on almost everything around that change, just not the way you did it when there are so many ways to do it "the crafters way".
 
Make it craftable, add costs for changing them as maintenance costs modified by skills.