Blackbeard06

Guys, these fees and taxes are not only necessary, they're beneficial to you. The game needs quanta sinks. Without them there will be inflation and everything costs more. You lose purchasing power either way. Remember when hematite cost more than 100 q/L? This was because missions were pumping billions per day into the economy. Now missions are nerfed. People think of them as pointless - why would I want to fly 7 hours for a only 8M quanta? But after the wipe things will be different. If inflation is kept down missions remain relevant. A XL package mission might be enough to buy a M-core ship, or whole megaliter of T1 ore. But only if quanta is leaving the economy down the drain of sinks.

The players demanded cheaper territory taxes and NQ gave it to them. Now NQ has to make it up in other areas. They have metrics about the quanta coming into and leaving the game, and they know how much sink and how much faucet they need.

This system is smart because it continues to be a cost burden to industrialists for as long as they continue to play, rather than one lump sum for an expensive schematic that never needs to be replaced. In this way, the economy remains steady. No mega-industrialist who bought every schematic in the game 2 years ago and now provides 25% of the elements needed for the whole playerbase. They will have to rely on you to produce their items, buying your schematics from the market.
 
So you can recoup the costs of producing the schematics by just selling them on the market. The market value will never be below the cost to produce unless the item is just completely unwanted. So in a way, this system is actually an EASY INCOME for players. Just use your slots to produce desirable schematics and sell them on the market. Free money for you.

A few years ago, my favorite book author posted a simple picture of his base in a different open sandbox game with huge random-gen world. The contest was about using the information in that picture to find the base. Information such as mountains, rivers, trees.. etc. The contest was very fun while using the map and terrain features, to search and to survive in the zombie wasteland. It was a challenge!  
Another idea is to have a pre-built construct hidden in the Helios System. Hidden information would be through out the system that provided clues on the location of this construct. Once the player finds the construct it would be a challenge to navigate through the construct (building, maze, tomb..). The prize could be anything, perhaps and exotic element or exclusive element skin that can only be found in this quest?  
For finding constructs out in space, like the "unknown origin" can we have more ships to find? Perhaps player built ships they submit for use in this feature?  
And finally something I just though about.... How about an asteroid crashes onto one planet somewhere in the system. (doesn't have to have an actual crash, could be a simple spawn) That asteroid happens to be a Tier 4 or 5 rich asteroid. This could be rare and can encourage players to explore the planets for some old fashioned mining, or surface mining. 

Please, "Fleet", not "Flotilla"

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

Here is my video from the battle, DU pvp from one point of view isn't that very exciting so I did my best on making it interesting. 
 

The main thing is the fight itself and all that it required in logistics on both sides, the final count doesn't matter as long as everyone had fun and people learned about PVP.
 
 

I'm not heavy on PVP and this was my 2nd time engaged in it. Regardless it was one of the moments I had the most fun in DU.
 
I've collected some stats on the operation and got a lot of video (47gb worth!) I plan to release my video later this week, but here is the info I've managed to collect;
 
Operation Hunter-Seeker Stats: (Siege of Gamma)
1B+ quanta donations to launch the operation
10k warp cells just to 1 way warp 56 ships from our L Carrier

33+ players from various orgs who were apart of the first wave (Empire, BOO, CVA, Penrose, SB Nation, CYT, IC, CRN, MSI, UA)
56 ships brought on first wave,
reinforcement waves came in from time to time, but most where help up engaging Legion ships elsewhere
150+ on site by 1.5 hours in engagement
 
War Effort Estimation:
Legion 55 Kills
Oblivion 35 Kills
Alien Core Won & Lost, but we managed to destroy assets on core
3 +/-  billion quanta in ships destroyed

 

Some of the most fun I have ever had in DU. Been waiting for something like that for years. GF to everybody involved hope we get a lot more like that 

With all this wipe talk, please just DU something. My motivation on playing DU lately has taken a huge hit. At this point I do not care what you do, just make it soon so I can get back to playing. 

Ok, I care about this enough to put my 2 cents in.
 
I am fully against a wipe. 
 
The main reason I started playing was because of the mentions/promises that the server will never be fully wiped again. 
 
I guess I consider myself a relatively new player.  I started playing around September 2022, and played for about a month, enjoyed it but got busy.  Then started playing again 2 months ago. Maybe I'm too new to see the issues but I do find the game pretty damn good, so I don't see an issue between the new players and old players as been suggested. How was this considered an issue?
 
Infact.. Its the experienced players and their builds have keep me very interested.  Nothing I love more than exploring the ground seeing what kinds of builds people have done, getting inspiration, etc. 
 
This isn't a competitive game (unless you go beyond the pvp zone), its a cooperative game.
 
If your trying to get new players in, then focus on what makes it difficult for them to get started. Heres a list of things my friends and myself struggled with .
 
Complexity
The game has depth and with that depth, there's a lot more complexity. It took at least two weeks before we started understanding how to play the game. My friends and I are pretty stubborn so we stuck with it, but if a player cant get a hang of the UI within a few hours and get a good grasp of how to do things, they will give up quickly.  This game really is immensely complex with the things it does which will scare away the majority of the players. Simplifying it will do more in attracting new players than doing a server wipe. 
 
Resources
Quite frankly, if it wasn't for the player markets, we would of given up. Starting up, it took a hell of a lot to figure out how to produce things. In the end, we just started selling ores and bought the things from the market. This goes back to the complexity statement.
 
PVP
This is a negative actually. Games great, its good the pvp is enabled, BUT mining for high tier ores is can be difficult with the piracy. Its fair and reasonable. Good stuff is in the pvp zone, but you will be found 80% of the time if you go asteroid hunting for good ores. 
 
Now lets talk about exploits. 
 
I cant say I know much about this, but I'm guessing it was some sort of extreme and easy way to get resources and items really quickly and easily, flooding the market, bringing in excessive amounts of money etc. 
 
Just a thought, how does a real economy work for a country? They  certainly don't raze it to the ground and start again if it gets out of control. 
 
Its a slow solution to fix it, but it certainly is fixable in time. Increasing in game taxes, temporarily reducing outputs, etc can help bring that in line. But like I said before. I'd like to point out I'm pretty sure those exploits, which I haven't directly taken advantage of (Its more like been from a player of a player of a player kind of thing), has gotten me more engaged into the game faster.
 
 
So here's the question I will throw out there,.
 
How did you come to the conclusion that the older community is the reason to why new members aren't interested? Seriously. Its the complexity thats more of an issue than anything.
 
Note, i'd be pretty peeved as well if a wipe did occur. As I said. The promise of never doing a full wipe again was the main reason I started playing. Breaking that promise is breaking that trust. Even if DU said they would never reset again after this one I could never believe it. There's a very good chance I probably wouldn't play again and probably seek a refund. 
 
In terms of a partial wipe.
 
 - Keep Talents 
 - Keep Blueprints/ships/etc
 - Kind reserve of credits/space/atmo/rocket fuel to help get started again.
 - Starting items for basic industry to alleviate the initial grind
Id be more receptive of that admittedly 

I think you can avoid a wipe quite easily:
- Create a new Solarsystem - 75000 SU far away from Helios
- Add the new FTUE to this Solarsystem, on release new players can decicde in which Solarsystem they want to spawn.
- Add a longrange Warpbeacon/Jumpgates 3 Month after release to connect these both systems. The warping of assets would then be possible, but insanely expensive.
- Slowboating would take nearly a month with the new speed changes. This should ensure that veterans cannot immediately flood the market in the new solar system.
Pros:
- No wipe needed
- New players can enjoy a fresh world
- Give you a reason to implement solarsystems
- You can deploy new good looking planets without wiping something
 

Clearly you have not been playing the game long if you think I will accept 5 Million Skill Points compared to the amount I have accumulated over the past 2 years that not even a drop in the bucket. This sounds ridiculous and totally unacceptable.

Although I could live with a partial wipe, I still don't see any reason for a wipe. The pros and cons given sound a bit contrived to me:

New player experience
If an MMO needs a wipe to attract new players, where are we a year later? You would need a wipe every year or so. The challenge is to make the game in such a way you can step in at any time I just did the new player experience on the test server, nice improvement. But I do not see how there being some big bases on Alioth or some rich players in space has any effect on the new players when I am setting up my base, start building and exploring. On the contrary: it gives something to explore and can be an inspiration to new builders in what is possible.
Exploits
Ok, so some players got rich using exploits. How does that effect other players?
The example I know of is the guy that bought 100 warp beacon schematics for 8mil each and was willing to sell them for 700mil. But my warp beacons (I bought the proper schematic) normally sell within two weeks and with a 1500% (15 times the production cost) margin. So it seems to have no effect at all that I can see. Ok, so they can buy more expensive guns. So what? the advantage of that is not great, and most of these cheaters don't even play anymore. Some other examples: gates have a >100% profit, advanced engines > 100%, rare engines 800%. There is no problem with rich people pushing out regular players. You can buy a Gate XL schematic with half a day of T5 astroid mining with 2 guys, you don't need exploits to be able to make it. If there is a problem with the markets, it is not because of rich players, but a lack of destruction. An element once made stays in the game forever, except in PVP and in players leaving the game. That is not a recipe for a healthy economy but exploits have nothing to do with it. It is rather naive to think there will never be an exploit again: people will find ways to cheat and exploit with every change to the game. Are you going to wipe every time that happens? Just deal with it and undo some transactions or kick some players, like other MMO's do. removing schematics will indeed resolve the market issue: there will be no market. The schematics where introduced exactly for this reason. Of course people will complain about the cost: new players are used to games where you are in the end game in 10 days and they don't want to invest time and effort for a 2 year period to build a factory (like I did). Those are exactly the players NQ should not listen too: they are on to the next game in a month anyway. You need to listen to the players that stick around and are willing to build long-term: those are your money-makers.
Partial wipe complexity
There are many ways to do partial wipes, and clean up the database. Not all of them sound complex to me:
You could let players mark up to 10 construct with a flag (like the headquarters) and then wipe the rest and reset the planets: the dynamics for planet reset and construct deletion are already there, and so is a 'tag construct' mechanism, so how is this complex? You could just remove the need for the schematics from the game and - like someone suggested in this forum - set up NPC buy orders for them. That makes refunding people real easy. And you don't need a wipe for that, could be done in a patch. You don't need to split communities if you want to start fresh and keep the current, you could make a gate/portal to a new solar system with its own currency where you can only take blueprints back and forth: that will be a bit more work I imagine, but only if you want new planets. you could also just copy this solar system and rename the current one 'legacy'. 
All-in-all it seems to me that part of the devs in NQ just want a clean database and are looking for arguments to justify a wipe.
 

I'm not against a wipe as long as we keep our blueprints and talent points.
 
Starting over is fine, but the time and money (paid accounts) that went into designing ships and training talents - not willing to start over on that. It just wouldn't be fun and it wouldn't be worth it - in time and money - to have to do that again.

A full wipe is preferred option for me, and i don't need any veteran player "compensation".

I'm ok with a full wipe, with core blueprints of only our own constructs, if possible. Some sort of reward for existing players would be nice, but not a deal breaker for me.
 
Thank you, NQ, for at least shedding some light on the discussion and considerations. More comms about it is always good.

Yeh I wasn’t aware schematics were hated, just the implementation. 
 
If schematics go, then something else needs to replace them. Maybe talent based efficiencies to encourage people
to specialise and use the market??

Im struggling to understand NQ , and do you understand even your own reason for doing things?
Sure the addition of Schematics was loss of players and not well received, but without a system like Schematics there are no brakes on anybodies capabilities to mass produce.
 
I do remember the days well before schematics how everybody had their own factory, and nobody needed to visit a market, DO note also with the addition of Mining units a world without schematics would be like everybody is playing factorio that is easy mode, there is no need to use the market, except maybe change my Bauxite to Hematite and thats it
 
Also i have been playing this game under the original promise of no Wipe, that was even the reason when some Economic exploits happened some of us requested a server roll back
 
Do a wipe, and i will wipe my account

Are Schematics truely so unpopular? It gates people from building massive factories with no sense of economies. It would make everything sell at Ore value vs  actual value because everyone wants to sell fast and get money now cratering a possible stable economy into the ground. or just make the only viable thing to sell on market is ore because everything else i can just make myself with minimal investment.