MukkBarovian

Stealing some other game's UI is just so trashy. I don't mean copying the general idea and building your own version. I don't mean having the same functionality. I mean copy+paste exactly what they have done and pretending it's your work. Very trashy.

About 1/4 of the pvpers in our group play with one character. A handful of us multibox multiple computers and can field 3+ accounts into a fight. Most of our group can field 2, the main box, and geforce now. 
 
Yes, if you want to pvp in this game you keep a character near a fueled up and ready ship. Or you are ready to force respawn back to that ship.
 
Yes, you stand very little chance out there if you wander out alone. You stand very little chance out there if you wander out alone running 2 alts, 3 or 4. You probably gonna die.

Right around the time of the schematic firesale, in EVE CCP made an oopsie and event sites were dropping Nightmare BPOs instead of nightmare BPCs. CCP quickly told their players that this was an error, to not use the BPO, and within a day or so had removed them from the game and replaced them with the correct item.
 
I remember watching that and watching NQ's total silence for the matter, watching it never get resolved. It was a bad feeling.

They don't want to remove the way schematics work from the game. They want to remove specific schematics from the game. Many months ago there was an unintended NPC firesale where anyone online for those 30 mins could buy schematics at 1% of the usual price. Billionaires were made that day. 
 
The server was not reset after it was fixed. NQ did not follow up on chasing down those schematics and removing them. 

Let's suppose a wipe is necessary and a good idea. Do you have the tools in place now to deal with the problems that lead to needing a wipe? 
Can you do a server rollback if something goes horribly wrong?
Can you find exploiters, and remove the damage they did in a targeted efficient way?
Is the economy fixed so that there is some churn and the wealthiest people at any given time don't just have an insurmountable advantage forever?
In other words, if you wipe into release, will you be able to then run a persistent MMO?
 
I have been waiting for some game systems to be fixed. My biggest complaint is that ships that die in pvp do not die. They just need a new core and 5 mins of scrap application. There are a lot of mechanics that favor the bigger group that don't exist in a better pvp game. Then there is the problem that people who do not participate in pvp never lose elements in any way. Which means that resources do not leave the game.
 
This wipe puts me in a different mood from "I hope they eventually fix it." It leads me to doing a cost-benefit analysis. "After the wipe I will have zero sunk costs in this game. At that point, is the gameplay good enough that I would want to play it?" I think the answer is no.

Well... It's good that you guys are talking about the issue.
 
I am ok with a wipe or not. Full wipe of blueprints, schematics, quanta. Whatever. What I am stuck on is talent points. I subbed a number a handful of accounts knowing that there might be a wipe but believing that what I was paying for was the talent points. I was very confident. "They might wipe. But you'll get to keep your talent points."
 
It seems that I was wrong.

Well... It's good that you guys are talking about the issue.
 
I am ok with a wipe or not. Full wipe of blueprints, schematics, quanta. Whatever. What I am stuck on is talent points. I subbed a number a handful of accounts knowing that there might be a wipe but believing that what I was paying for was the talent points. I was very confident. "They might wipe. But you'll get to keep your talent points."
 
It seems that I was wrong.

Ships should die when they are killed. 

Ships should die when they are killed. 

Erhm. They are not saying what you claim them to be saying.
 
Deckard is explaining that the current scans UNDERGROUND portion has no value in demeter as the ore will no longer be there. Imagine now in pre-demeter someone going to town on a tile and mined every single piece of ore out of there. The scan would still have the old values, but there would not be a single liter of ore in there. Same with demeter. Old scans would still show what used to be in the ground, but it won't be there.
 
The seed they are referring to is the seed for the random number generator used to generate the noise for the ore distribution. This is unrelated to current pre-demeter ore distribution as a tile currently full of coal can have 0 L/h after demeter. That the seed will be different on the live servers compared to the PTS. This was already well known and uncontested and needed so people couldn't scan on PTS to know where the good tile in Live would be. Also completely unrelated to old scans.

#1 It listened to feedback by those who yelled the loudest. The loudest and most annoying do not represent the rest of the customer base. Not to mention that many
#2 Changing their minds is often also called reneging on a deal.
#3 So your boss changed his mind on the work you did the last two weeks and decides to not pay you. You OK with that? If so, please share his contact details and I'll inform your boss of the happy news.
 
So here we did work the last two weeks based on the information NQ gave and we did work for nothing, without any rewards/pay. And don't give me that "You can still use that info till Demeter launches!" BS, because if I knew what I know now, I would have done something else with the time spend flying ships, placing them perfectly, scanning, rinse and repeat. 200 scans go Poof! I have no issue if that was just with the scans I already had.
 
Hell, if some people had the drive to scan entire planets, good for them! This doesn't solve any problems for the regular player, this makes the matter way, way worse for the regular player. Why? I'm not saying, because then NQ will 'fix' the alternative as well. You'll see when we're done... I suspect the crying will be way, way worse.

This pisses me off. Not so much because of the scan wipe, I'd be happy either way. I'm pissed because less than a month ago (Oct 20th to be precise) you said that old scans would still be good. Then you turn 180 LESS THAN A MONTH LATER and say they wont
 
If you haven't decided, let us know you haven't decided. That's fine. Some things need careful consideration and feedback before making a decision. Don't plaster a big "Confirmation: Old scans will still be valid" and then double back on it as soon as you get a bit of push-back. Stick to your decision. I even made a suggestion that you could keep current good for a while and THEN do a scan wipe with a new seed.
 
People are not angry because you're wiping the scans, people are angry because you said you wouldn't
 
(just to be clear, the below info is no longer accurate)
 

 
(from)
 
 

Wiping the scan results would have been an ok decision if they had made that in the first place. Listening to the whining community and changing their mind was not.

NQ,
As noted, you have created a new issue by changing a clearly articulated direction in mid-stream. By definitely announcing scans would be retained, you essentially forced players that were already disadvantaged by not having massive quantities of scans to shift their gameplay for weeks in order to reasonably prepare for Demeter which they could have better used preparing in other ways. Now by switching directions, you have essentially wasted peoples time for no reason. I was largely on the fence on scans/no scans and would have not particularly cared whether you kept them or not. I am now ROYALLY PISSED by the direction change that WASTED a huge amount of time for NO REASON. I don't see anyway for you to fix this at this point since no one is going to be happy with anything you do on this matter now. But in the future FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR DIETY OF CHOICE DO WHAT YOU SAY OR AT LEAST INDICATE YOUR ARE UNDECIDED. WTF. Would you like some syrup with your waffles?

I remember a few videos where JC said "No wipe." Then he changed his tune and said "We don't want to wipe." Then he got canned. So \o/. 
 
The game is definitely in an alpha state. I find the wipe/no wipe thing frustrating. First the game is either in a state right at this moment that it needs a wipe, or it doesn't. If it needs a wipe it needs a wipe. And only someone with dev tools can know if that is the case. Players can speculate at best. 
 
Then the question is simple. Either the devs want the freedom to screw things up like the economy and feel comfortable in trying different game mechanics; the freedom of knowing you can't screw up too badly while they're figuring out the basic game structure. Or the devs want the certainty that they have to get shit right now, because we're doing this shit live and second chances are for pussies! Both ways of rolling have their advantages and their disadvantages. Deadlines and do or die situations can inspire creativity. And so can taking off the pressure. 
 
The crowd demanding a wipe infuriate me because they seem to have very little sympathy for the people who have been doing stuff in this game, almost a hostility to the people who have had some degree of success. And they seem to struggle with the premise that this kind of MMO, when it launches, is not something that would wipe every 6 months or so. These games roll for years and years, the lifetime of the whole product.
 
Its as if the wipe crowd believes that NQ will wipe one day, and then never again ever make a mistake that will imbalance the economy. And wiping the game once will not solve the long term problem that new players will have dealing with entrenched interests. It will only turn you, the guy reading this right now into one of the old guard. But it won't make life comparatively easier for the guy who joins 1 year after release. Let me on the life boat! Screw the next guy.
 
On the other hand I remember when schematics went on sale for 1/10 or so the price they normally sell for and I missed out. I was mad. I'm pretty sure other "unfair" events like this have happened. It becomes a question of how borked things are, rather than if they are borked at all.
 
If they do wipe, paying subscribers will almost certainly get to keep their talent points. This is the most important asset you have. And if you have 50 million talent points, and actually enjoy playing this terrible game, with all the knowledge of how to do it, you will quickly climb back on top of the heap. With all the advantages in the world over the noobie starting with zero talent points and zero clue. 
 
Godspeed little noobie.

In EVE there are "NPC Stations." These are places you can store your junk and they disappear from the game world; every idiot doesn't have to load the assets of every other idiot who happens to live in a given place when he goes by. They are essentially instanced in the equivalent of what would be an inter mission game hub in a single player game. One million people could store all their junk in Jita 4-4 and it would be fine. 
 
Computer games of this sort really need safe places you can stash your stuff and /not play the game/. In EVE, highsec NPC stations do the job. There are riskier places to store your stuff long term. But if you quit EVE for 8 months and you put your stuff in Jita 4-4, you can be pretty certain that your stuff will remain. Games should be forgiving of people who don't want to play them right now.
 
"You want a break? Sure thing. It was good to see you! We'll be waiting right here anytime you want to come back."
 
Its part of the charm of a computer game.
 
Right now there are safe places to store your junk, space stations -until the devs get around to screwing them up- and the sanctuary moon. Its counter intuitive, but the fact of the matter is that post Demeter, you store your junk long term in space, and you go daytripping on planets. Maybe for a month you set up a mining expedition. But all of your long term assets... in space, or on the sanctuary moon. I prefer space because I have a number of space only craft. This isn't bad per say. Maybe its a lot easier on the server if everyone has their private space station far away from everyone else because then the game has to load in a lot fewer assets for each person moving around. But the problem is that people intuited that Alioth would be the safest place to live. The center of the game world. And now all the people who stashed their stuff there and left are about to get screwed. 
 
People don't come back to a game because "Hey dude you need to lift all your stuff off Alioth or you're gonna lose it. What? No its still a bad game that doesn't have a whole lot of fun things to do. The devs are working on it." They don't. Mostly they just quit forever. People come back because "Hey its now fun." 
 
My Suggestion
Allow people to load junk into the market containers for free. An infinite amount of their junk. Or add a new kind of NPC building "Infinite Long Term Storage" that provides the equivalent function.
 
Maybe even create a "Parking Garage" style of location that allows someone to disappear a dynamic construct, that they can retrieve there later.
 
Then, anybody who wants to play the game casually can do so without owning a base that clogs up the game, uses territory other people want to utilize, and forces everyone to load their stuff when they come by.

In EVE there are "NPC Stations." These are places you can store your junk and they disappear from the game world; every idiot doesn't have to load the assets of every other idiot who happens to live in a given place when he goes by. They are essentially instanced in the equivalent of what would be an inter mission game hub in a single player game. One million people could store all their junk in Jita 4-4 and it would be fine. 
 
Computer games of this sort really need safe places you can stash your stuff and /not play the game/. In EVE, highsec NPC stations do the job. There are riskier places to store your stuff long term. But if you quit EVE for 8 months and you put your stuff in Jita 4-4, you can be pretty certain that your stuff will remain. Games should be forgiving of people who don't want to play them right now.
 
"You want a break? Sure thing. It was good to see you! We'll be waiting right here anytime you want to come back."
 
Its part of the charm of a computer game.
 
Right now there are safe places to store your junk, space stations -until the devs get around to screwing them up- and the sanctuary moon. Its counter intuitive, but the fact of the matter is that post Demeter, you store your junk long term in space, and you go daytripping on planets. Maybe for a month you set up a mining expedition. But all of your long term assets... in space, or on the sanctuary moon. I prefer space because I have a number of space only craft. This isn't bad per say. Maybe its a lot easier on the server if everyone has their private space station far away from everyone else because then the game has to load in a lot fewer assets for each person moving around. But the problem is that people intuited that Alioth would be the safest place to live. The center of the game world. And now all the people who stashed their stuff there and left are about to get screwed. 
 
People don't come back to a game because "Hey dude you need to lift all your stuff off Alioth or you're gonna lose it. What? No its still a bad game that doesn't have a whole lot of fun things to do. The devs are working on it." They don't. Mostly they just quit forever. People come back because "Hey its now fun." 
 
My Suggestion
Allow people to load junk into the market containers for free. An infinite amount of their junk. Or add a new kind of NPC building "Infinite Long Term Storage" that provides the equivalent function.
 
Maybe even create a "Parking Garage" style of location that allows someone to disappear a dynamic construct, that they can retrieve there later.
 
Then, anybody who wants to play the game casually can do so without owning a base that clogs up the game, uses territory other people want to utilize, and forces everyone to load their stuff when they come by.

In EVE there are "NPC Stations." These are places you can store your junk and they disappear from the game world; every idiot doesn't have to load the assets of every other idiot who happens to live in a given place when he goes by. They are essentially instanced in the equivalent of what would be an inter mission game hub in a single player game. One million people could store all their junk in Jita 4-4 and it would be fine. 
 
Computer games of this sort really need safe places you can stash your stuff and /not play the game/. In EVE, highsec NPC stations do the job. There are riskier places to store your stuff long term. But if you quit EVE for 8 months and you put your stuff in Jita 4-4, you can be pretty certain that your stuff will remain. Games should be forgiving of people who don't want to play them right now.
 
"You want a break? Sure thing. It was good to see you! We'll be waiting right here anytime you want to come back."
 
Its part of the charm of a computer game.
 
Right now there are safe places to store your junk, space stations -until the devs get around to screwing them up- and the sanctuary moon. Its counter intuitive, but the fact of the matter is that post Demeter, you store your junk long term in space, and you go daytripping on planets. Maybe for a month you set up a mining expedition. But all of your long term assets... in space, or on the sanctuary moon. I prefer space because I have a number of space only craft. This isn't bad per say. Maybe its a lot easier on the server if everyone has their private space station far away from everyone else because then the game has to load in a lot fewer assets for each person moving around. But the problem is that people intuited that Alioth would be the safest place to live. The center of the game world. And now all the people who stashed their stuff there and left are about to get screwed. 
 
People don't come back to a game because "Hey dude you need to lift all your stuff off Alioth or you're gonna lose it. What? No its still a bad game that doesn't have a whole lot of fun things to do. The devs are working on it." They don't. Mostly they just quit forever. People come back because "Hey its now fun." 
 
My Suggestion
Allow people to load junk into the market containers for free. An infinite amount of their junk. Or add a new kind of NPC building "Infinite Long Term Storage" that provides the equivalent function.
 
Maybe even create a "Parking Garage" style of location that allows someone to disappear a dynamic construct, that they can retrieve there later.
 
Then, anybody who wants to play the game casually can do so without owning a base that clogs up the game, uses territory other people want to utilize, and forces everyone to load their stuff when they come by.

The vision is dead on arrival. DU is not going to be what DU was sold as going to be. The guy with that vision was dumped overboard. He couldn't deliver. Many of his promises were pie in the sky fantasy. And the implementation left something to be desired.
 
So now the question is if we're going to get something that's cool anyway.

I remember a few videos where JC said "No wipe." Then he changed his tune and said "We don't want to wipe." Then he got canned. So \o/. 
 
The game is definitely in an alpha state. I find the wipe/no wipe thing frustrating. First the game is either in a state right at this moment that it needs a wipe, or it doesn't. If it needs a wipe it needs a wipe. And only someone with dev tools can know if that is the case. Players can speculate at best. 
 
Then the question is simple. Either the devs want the freedom to screw things up like the economy and feel comfortable in trying different game mechanics; the freedom of knowing you can't screw up too badly while they're figuring out the basic game structure. Or the devs want the certainty that they have to get shit right now, because we're doing this shit live and second chances are for pussies! Both ways of rolling have their advantages and their disadvantages. Deadlines and do or die situations can inspire creativity. And so can taking off the pressure. 
 
The crowd demanding a wipe infuriate me because they seem to have very little sympathy for the people who have been doing stuff in this game, almost a hostility to the people who have had some degree of success. And they seem to struggle with the premise that this kind of MMO, when it launches, is not something that would wipe every 6 months or so. These games roll for years and years, the lifetime of the whole product.
 
Its as if the wipe crowd believes that NQ will wipe one day, and then never again ever make a mistake that will imbalance the economy. And wiping the game once will not solve the long term problem that new players will have dealing with entrenched interests. It will only turn you, the guy reading this right now into one of the old guard. But it won't make life comparatively easier for the guy who joins 1 year after release. Let me on the life boat! Screw the next guy.
 
On the other hand I remember when schematics went on sale for 1/10 or so the price they normally sell for and I missed out. I was mad. I'm pretty sure other "unfair" events like this have happened. It becomes a question of how borked things are, rather than if they are borked at all.
 
If they do wipe, paying subscribers will almost certainly get to keep their talent points. This is the most important asset you have. And if you have 50 million talent points, and actually enjoy playing this terrible game, with all the knowledge of how to do it, you will quickly climb back on top of the heap. With all the advantages in the world over the noobie starting with zero talent points and zero clue. 
 
Godspeed little noobie.

The "warp problem" is that travel isn't dangerous, only expensive. But its not so expensive as to tempt anybody into cutting corners and going somewhere on foot rather than paying $ to warp. In fact the "safe" option is more convenient, getting you there in seconds. The cheap option involves a boring hours long trek across empty space that could easily turn into a terrible disaster. And because of the timelines involved, you may have gone to the john, or to go wack off, or take a walk, or cook dinner by time something actually happens. 
 
In a balanced game, the safe option would be more expensive, and less convenient than the dangerous option. That way you tempt people into cutting corners and generating content. And you reward people who can handle themselves in tough situations. 
 
The "warp problem" would be fixed if planetary pvp was implemented. In that case, taking a direct warp path to a pvp planet would be the most foolish, dangerous thing to do. But the problem with that is that planetary PVP is almost certainly pretty far down the development pipeline. That means travel into what should be PVP territory is just safe, and will be for the foreseeable future. 
 
That's the "warp problem" and its probably a lot easier for the devs to move the warp points out of the safe zone than to implement planetary pvp. Which means asking the devs for that kind of thing makes sense to do. And bringing it up is a reasonable ask. As opposed to say, demanding planetary PVP happen right now.

This is the encouraging part. I'm ok with no planetary PVP anytime soon because I do understand that the the game is being developed on a shoestring budget. I'm happy to hear about mining units. I'm happy to hear about rare resources in the PVP zone. I'm ok with there being absolutely no mention of NPCs, because I would be quite satisfied if the things in this blog were delivered. I'm particularly happy to hear about second thoughts about .23 industry. ?This whole blog makes me feel quite a bit better about things.
 
Overall this then comes down to execution. Can you feed us enough content while you spin up and finalize your back end server stuff? Or is this a, "Come back in a year when its finished cooking," situation?

The "warp problem" is that travel isn't dangerous, only expensive. But its not so expensive as to tempt anybody into cutting corners and going somewhere on foot rather than paying $ to warp. In fact the "safe" option is more convenient, getting you there in seconds. The cheap option involves a boring hours long trek across empty space that could easily turn into a terrible disaster. And because of the timelines involved, you may have gone to the john, or to go wack off, or take a walk, or cook dinner by time something actually happens. 
 
In a balanced game, the safe option would be more expensive, and less convenient than the dangerous option. That way you tempt people into cutting corners and generating content. And you reward people who can handle themselves in tough situations. 
 
The "warp problem" would be fixed if planetary pvp was implemented. In that case, taking a direct warp path to a pvp planet would be the most foolish, dangerous thing to do. But the problem with that is that planetary PVP is almost certainly pretty far down the development pipeline. That means travel into what should be PVP territory is just safe, and will be for the foreseeable future. 
 
That's the "warp problem" and its probably a lot easier for the devs to move the warp points out of the safe zone than to implement planetary pvp. Which means asking the devs for that kind of thing makes sense to do. And bringing it up is a reasonable ask. As opposed to say, demanding planetary PVP happen right now.

The "warp problem" is that travel isn't dangerous, only expensive. But its not so expensive as to tempt anybody into cutting corners and going somewhere on foot rather than paying $ to warp. In fact the "safe" option is more convenient, getting you there in seconds. The cheap option involves a boring hours long trek across empty space that could easily turn into a terrible disaster. And because of the timelines involved, you may have gone to the john, or to go wack off, or take a walk, or cook dinner by time something actually happens. 
 
In a balanced game, the safe option would be more expensive, and less convenient than the dangerous option. That way you tempt people into cutting corners and generating content. And you reward people who can handle themselves in tough situations. 
 
The "warp problem" would be fixed if planetary pvp was implemented. In that case, taking a direct warp path to a pvp planet would be the most foolish, dangerous thing to do. But the problem with that is that planetary PVP is almost certainly pretty far down the development pipeline. That means travel into what should be PVP territory is just safe, and will be for the foreseeable future. 
 
That's the "warp problem" and its probably a lot easier for the devs to move the warp points out of the safe zone than to implement planetary pvp. Which means asking the devs for that kind of thing makes sense to do. And bringing it up is a reasonable ask. As opposed to say, demanding planetary PVP happen right now.

The "warp problem" is that travel isn't dangerous, only expensive. But its not so expensive as to tempt anybody into cutting corners and going somewhere on foot rather than paying $ to warp. In fact the "safe" option is more convenient, getting you there in seconds. The cheap option involves a boring hours long trek across empty space that could easily turn into a terrible disaster. And because of the timelines involved, you may have gone to the john, or to go wack off, or take a walk, or cook dinner by time something actually happens. 
 
In a balanced game, the safe option would be more expensive, and less convenient than the dangerous option. That way you tempt people into cutting corners and generating content. And you reward people who can handle themselves in tough situations. 
 
The "warp problem" would be fixed if planetary pvp was implemented. In that case, taking a direct warp path to a pvp planet would be the most foolish, dangerous thing to do. But the problem with that is that planetary PVP is almost certainly pretty far down the development pipeline. That means travel into what should be PVP territory is just safe, and will be for the foreseeable future. 
 
That's the "warp problem" and its probably a lot easier for the devs to move the warp points out of the safe zone than to implement planetary pvp. Which means asking the devs for that kind of thing makes sense to do. And bringing it up is a reasonable ask. As opposed to say, demanding planetary PVP happen right now.