BlindingBright

NQ Logic: You used those skills, profited from the early game bot orders... and mining units are still viable with the game changes. Also, NQ reps have said if you don't like it, and the game, don't play... when people have voiced their deep concerns. And arguably there are less and less players playing due to their attitude towards the community... so some are taking the hint. I know most of my friend group from beta keep being astounded by what more NQ can and do to squeeze life out of their game.... all while hoping they'll still change it around, we all love the idea of DU and have thousands of hours playing invested... Even falling player numbers are apparently not enough for NQ to realize that their direction is driving people away, like you can see a definitive drop with the annoucement via steam stats... its pretty clear. And what happens when there is even a lower population of active players without bots? How will a new player be able to join the game and mine/make enough to even buy parts.... from bots/market when they die off? Guess they'll just pull the lever and turn the bot orders back on? Most all games have more than one 1-2 ways to make fresh currency In game... with many games, and most MMO's rewarding players for everything to keep the endorphins kicking and players inventories full of shinies. Kill a monster? Here is some currency. Sell an item to a vendor in game? Here is some currency. Oh, you got top leader board for that arena? Here is some currency. Ah, you logged in and did your daily crafting quest? Here is some currency. Oh, you completed a quest? Here is some currency. We have... missions... and vr challenges that are different types of missions that you can only do once a day. Oh, and login bonus. Anyways done beating a dead horse. Myself and others have tried, and maybe the only thing NQ will listen to at this point is the sound of players quiting. I really hope they can make the game fun/more playable, and that by doing so creates a game with a positive churn rate.

Unreal 4 was what NQ turned down at one time for Unigine. During the dev process almost every game announced for unigine fails. It's a great simulation engine and for benchmarking, but it's largely the bottleneck for better performance and I know tons of people are gobsmacked by the bad performance with modern gaming rigs. At the time Unigine was the only out of the box offering to do planet scale, I recall the demos when they first announced the engine. Since then though unreal engine 5.1 has come out, and with it the double floating point precision needed for planet scale. It won't fix their backend server issues, but it might finally give players a stable 60fps with modern equipment without heating your whole house. Though your point is strong, not like DU is backed by AAA studios with a mainstream established IP. Final Fantasy and elder scrolls are too big to fail. DU is a fun experiment by an amazing French guy with a dream and the idea presented to us without the person is hollowed out version of that in its place. I loved J.C's DU. I dont love the watered down version NQ has created.

Imma comment on this one, it's my namesake! DU was better in Beta, minus some small QoL changes. I'm glad I at least got to play the suppirior version of it before release, even if it had its issues it wasn't nearly this time gated/grindy to start and was easier to establish yourself. Plus DU has better support response times and was cheaper in Beta with... more planets. Better mining rates. Even roid mining was a bit better because of respawns every weekend... they did no real balancing of the game before release... and it shows. If Empyrion had DU's voxel(it does, just not as detailed) tech and larger server size it'd be pretty much be what DU promised to be... at a one time buy in price. Playing both at DU launch and... kept feeling like I was playing what DU was attempting to do. Even the start with the landers are nearly the same. Fun part? I bought empyrion year+ ago for $15, it added a bunch of features and updates(still active development, arguably faster paced than NQ dev team) Funny enough the industry in that game is more like what DU announced for kickstarter, using factory units without the need for tooons of machines. Can even have your factory make the parts/deploy a blueprint of a ship/base That can take hours for it to manufacture all the parts. So many free BP's on steam workshop. So you started singleplayer? Well you can spool up the save on a dedicated private Server and build a community as others have and even charge access to via patreon. Putting the server owner in control of their game world. Every feature DU has, arguably Emperyion has and soooo much more. Need quick ore? Use a mining hover vehicle with drills on it to mine underground like DU used to have, but you can hand mine them or use constructor blocks. Want to automine? Its there! Asteroids?! Takes a few minutes to find one... although you can go hunting for rich roid spots in a near limitless amounts of solar systems to explore... that have game related POI's to find and explore. My eyes are wide open after trying the latest version of Empyriom during DU's launch.

Same video Deckard had said "Not ready for launch." when referencing other features. And IMHO those 4 words shouldn't be next together in any fashion during your games launch announcement. We know the game wasn't ready for launch, the devs know it wasn't ready despite the cognitive dissonance brought on by management forcing a launch and stating it was ready. And announcing a feature during your launch announcement for launch... and then quietly stating in a post it won't be ready for launch before... launch, while also stating its ready for launch. Sorta set the tone for me going into launch. Assuming NQ won't talk about any new features till they're ready for release at this point to avoid the creation of expectations that they could potentially fail to meet. With more funding and a larger team with a more diverse skill set and this game can still be amazing. I just hope NQ and management can dig deep to give it the resources needed to be what it can be with the right TLC.

This is my argument for it being an exploit. I really don't think the people in charge of defining it as an exploit fully comprehend the issue, or why it's an issue even though your technically burning a charge. Only started abusing it once NQ sided with a streamer who was abusing it at an org level in Beta and publicy stated it was A-okay! They argued it wasn't an exploit, I and others reported it as an exploit. So I'm assuming instead of banning an entire streamers org for abusing it they decided it was OKAY! Because, your still burning a charge. I can see both sides, either way it WAS not intended gameplay and doing it arguably gives players an advantage over those that don't... specifically because you don't need a high throughput tile to get the ore bonus. Pro tip, look for other org/player owned tiles and grab a low output tile of high tier ore and just go ham!!! Get Dat ore, it's not an exploit! Again for the class, a tile that gives 1L an hour of let's say T5, gives the same bonus as a tile outputting 80L an hour. Find tile/s with the map tool that have a flower of 2-3 or more claimed tiles, check the tile name. Check to see what level of autominer is on their outpost to see what tier of ore it's harvesting. Then just plop down a TU next to them and setup your 1 autominer if the same tier, not connected to a container, and just calibrate, remove the element, backspace it in again with build mode, and repeat calibration. Pro tip, moving the auto miner into a slightly different position spawns the ore in a new spot so you can pile up a bunch easily for harvesting. Easy fix, just output a set amount of ore multiplied by the autominers hourly rate for that ore type. It's literally 10 minutes of dev time, less than a single line of code. Probably be able to fix the code and check in the fix faster than me writing this post on my phone while making chunky monkey. Though if they 'fix' it now, it signals it WAS an exploit/issue and sorta flies in the face of openly allowing it. Sorta expecting a silent 'nerf' if they do change things, and not explain the reasoning behind it.. and still allow you to do it... just not get the full ore bonus as before, effectively making the abuse of it pointless.... but that doesn't stop those with high tier/high amount of liters an hour from potentially abusing it... so... dammed of they do, dammed if they don't at this point as it's publicly stated as not an exploit. Meanwhile I've casually mentioned people can duplicate constructs the past 2 weeks, nobody cared. We've had a quanta dupe already. And half the major issues / exploits I reported in Beta are still an issue in live with no response from NQ staff to the ticket re-reporting them.... but gosh darn it, if someone builds a small tower next to a mission point and NQ allows it... everyone looses their mind! Game is riddled with exploits at launch, several NQ has openly allowed... and many more that they haven't even commented on Or have had any public accountability over... as they should trying to cultivate a persistant single shard game universe where these issues were held as partial reasoning why they had wiped players progress in Beta. I love DU, ant I want it to succeed. Outright allowing exploits and remainig silent on others is not how to succeed, in my opinion. NQ can still release a public statement, and retroactively punish players found exploiting(especially quanta dupe, construct dupe, and element dupes) I've seen other MMO services punish players months later. I just hope NQ has the right data engineer/s to sift through their database to find the outliers and deal with them appropriately. And likewise for NQ to release a statement acknowledging the issues, and reiterate their stance on exploits and their policy, and ideally process, for dealing with them. As a passionate player and at a time advocate for the game it hurts to see, though I know people at NQ are only human and judging by their team not many of them have experience in dealing with these sorts of issues in MMO development.... hope they can hire some extra hands to deal with issues their core team has struggled with. I hope the powers that be (CEO, investment firm, managers) give their team the tools and resources needed to deal with it going forward. I tried to be constructive with this post, just hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears.... who am I kidding? NQ ain't got time to read my tickets, why would they have time to read this forum post?

They just need to spin off pets, AvA(and pets vs pets) along with Territory Warfare into a gacha game and start making billions of dollars.

I started to notice poor server performance directly after they had a 4+ hour maintenance where they took all of their internet facing assets down (website, support, game, etc). The following week the servers had to be restarted at peek times in the US. I don't think that is a conspiracy, they don't want to admit to downgrading their service shortly after raising the price.

DU is arguably at it's lowest population point since they started charging a sub.... and the servers are still on fire. This does not bode well for release. Paired with talk of a wipe still being on the table, and NQ has nailed their game to the cross. I don't like the next part of this movie.

Every time I've attempted to play since Athena dropped I've logged into horrible server issues that has ruined the experince. Every time I had to wait for something to load I kept thinking "oh... NQ is probably gonna wipe all of this"... it's like that moment when you're looking at your phone and the screen turns off to reveal the reflection of your face from the most unflattering angle ever, and when you catch a glance you start to rethink your life a bit.

Personally liked the more intense version it was initially on PTS..... Besides a few "issues" here and there the new graphics are pretty solid.

Could be a unique game mechanic that some people find oddly relaxing and fun, though it sounds bandwidth intensive and expensive to support. They just need to tax the ore mined from the ground, like you can only use so much BAE (big aphelia energy) before your mining tool stops working. Then NQ could charge money for a premium subscription/currency, people could buy BAE to support the increased server costs to mine. None of it will matter when DAC is added and people can just trade/buy quanta anyways.

I had realized the DU I loved has been dying for a while, and it has been me holding out hope that it'd come back. Though it's not over yet, and I still have a small bit of hopium that NQ will come to their senses. Myself and my group has largely stopped playing, not due to gameplay changes but from inaction/lack of direction from the developers... and we've played pretty "hardcore" since before 0.23 hit... Several of us are still poking at the DU Discord channels, and likewise chatting daily in org channels... we're all just waiting and slowly loosing hope. Weird feels for a game that's supposed to release soon. if by release, they meant relieving the game of it's suffering... it'd make more sense.

You are free from her tyranny and just in time to take a seat on a beach of alioth and watch the servers get wiped.

Scam... hard to say but arguably no; deceptive and potentially false advertising? Yes. I was hoping that Athena would bring PVP more in line with the videos showcasing it on the website/ads... and it doesn't really. It was a bit closer, but still- it's not remotely the same. I had imagined space cores/alien cores massively slowing down speed/weapon distance by emitting a quantum disruption field that fundamentally alters physics in a radiating space... which I had hoped was going to be the case, but alas- no... *edit to add* Also the servers caught fire in the middle of the PTS event... it was a mess. So, with Athena being the last major update before DU goes to full release, and the "envisioned" gameplay still missing... what does this leave us with? It may not be a scam, but it smells of fraud and it could be argued it is, legally. *end edit*

Thankfully NQ isn't operating out of Germany and or under its jurisdiction? But yeah, I only played DU because it billed itself as a Persistent MMO. Charging a monthy sub... so to me it was 'launched' as a service, even if still in Beta. Being a persistent MMO is one of the only things that separates it from soooo many other games. Second to the scripting language, and voxel system. Beyond that the features are lacking compared to NMS, Avorian, Space Engineers, Elite, empyerion, etc.. where they don't have those key features that make DU unique but are still in the space games genere. All of which I love, but keep coming back to DU for what makes it unique. I don't think NQ is done with massive game changes, even after release they may need to revamp a system and be arguably back at the same technical point where a wipe is the easy option.... We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. -JFK Persistenance adjective 1. continuing firmly or obstinately in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

I'd argue it was stabilizing and the churn was improving. The talk of wipe and the sour taste NQ has left... may have had an affect on that, IDK- haven't been on a lot lately to see numbers, though https://mmo-population.com/r/dualuniverse/ shows it as it's lowest peek of players yet. There was a lot of positive buzz in my group about DU and the "comeback" it was starting to make.... it was cool to see. IDK, it's been nice to not be on the rollercoaster for a couple weeks. Haven't quit DU, but am taking a welcomed break till they decide what they want to do for wipe/launch coming up. I really hope NQ can sort things out and not kill their game before it's released.

NQ has slapped a few peoples wrists today... Just gotta make funnier memes? So far I've had zero warnings for the memes I've made, and I've made some spicy ones. Maybe the powers that be at NQ still leiks me, idk. Will say that before this mess I was more "constructive" in my posting on the forums, now it's mostly satire to stoke the flames of constructive discussion. Though the line between satire & trolling is pretty thin.... From the sounds of it several people have been reprimanded in the last few hours on the forums. The sad thing, instead of working to communicate and work with their community to resolve the issue(they created through multiple wipe mentions without an answer, and continue to pick at the scab!) they let it fester like a wound... day after day. and now their stop-gap is to start reprimanding people that are upset for what I see as largely legitimate reasons... for many MMO's are hobbies, and playing for many is a hobby due to the time investment. This is the first time playing a game where I've been this upset with the developers... have wanted to tell them how it is and well... doom/gloom. Have written a couple things out and was like 'Nah, this is just over the line' and figured "if I didn't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"... which is sad, I love DU, the community at large, and there are several key developers I think are legitimately trying to make it work under not the most ideal conditions on a tech/platform that does something no other game really does with pieces that no other platform uses. Feels bad man.

Except historically a game wipe has never brought in any substantial amount of players. You're saying that they'll see a 2000% increase in player base when they add the "1.0" and "Release" moniker to the game and do a wipe? New World, for example- lost 80% of it's player base when going from Beta(and wiping) to release. It has since lost a further 80%.... and that is without a monthly subscription. https://steamdb.info/app/1063730/graphs/ The other difference, is with DU the player base largely makes the "game content"... paired with it being subscription based. it's a unique balance no other game has, and there is nothing to say wiping that content in the game would bring in more players. If you have any data to back up your claims, I'd love to see it! Math is nice, big numbers are big, but numbers mean nothing without data to give them meaning.

Stop being a carebear, don't you know this is a FULL LOOT OPEN WORLD PVP GAME?!!!! Ugh, all these noobs that just won't git gud and complain when I gank them in PVP space. It's the game, not the player! Also this game needs to be more PVP focused, it's the only real content- everything else in game should just there to support it. I mean it's pvp space so expect to be blown up; it's all fair game! Yeah there is no prison system... or bounty system.... or in game NPC's to help police space... or incentives to not pirate, it's great! Full gank, full loot baby! If we didn't have safe zones all these whiny carebears would stop playing and the full loot pvp master-race of noveans will finally rise! The issue with every other full-loot pvp mmo is they tried to cater to the majority of their casual carebears making the game fun for nobody. Don't make the same mistake NQ, listen to your hardcore PVP crowd or this game will end up like every other full loot focused pvp MMO with a subscription, dead. I'm not being toxic, you're being toxic... there is nothing toxic about communities in full loot pvp games.. you just need to git gud. This post brought to you by salt-dipped sarcasm pops! Don't believe the taste, wipe away your doubt and try one today!

Just in Beta they've had 3 different CEO's. That might also help shed some light on the managment struggles they've had. The poor developers that have lived through that must have some whiplash. feels bad man. DU has so much potential.

I own 4 out of 6 of those games, the big difference is.... they don't charge monthly or advertise themselves as a persistent universe mmo built by players. What I don't get... is the sheer amount of "deafness" from NQ. Their players were in an uproar over slots/taxes... they appease us largely... and then like freaking gold-fish go back to the same behavior. All while the current player base dwindles away....

Problem: Built up universe with a single solar system that is fairly built out without fresh real-estate for new players on release. Filled by players with built up resources. Problem: Kickstarter promise of multiple solar systems. Solution: Single shard universe with two+ solar systems that require a gate to travel between (or takes weeks/months of real world travel time) allowing for a "fresh" player experince. We were promised a universe, not a solar system. Don't do us dirty like this NQ.

I just ended up getting auto-charged for $40 for two accounts at x3 months each. If you wipe, will I get a refund of all my money spent during beta? Would be a non-issue if this wasn't a monthly sub persistent universe/mmo I paid monthly for a persistent game. Are you telling me that was a lie?

Easy: This is where RDMS should be looked at. Org Notification RDMS could fix this, as a super-legate I hate that my fellow legates can't get notifications relating to org matters. Plus it'd allow the org to add non legates to that, brownie points if NQ can add different notification types as separate RDMS categories. Easy: Likewise, warp beacons need RDMS, give us RDMS to give an actor list access to a beacon... likewise create RDMS to RECIEVE access, so you can control who's beacons you see and not get overloaded with too many beacons just because people gave you access. As warp beacons will probably become more of a... thing, we need more ways to manage them. as it is nothing has changed since their initial implementation when JC wasn't expecting them to be common place for a while. Not so easy?: Or how about letting me create an RDMS roll for others to manage a "sub group" of tagged RDMS items. Allowing me to give NON LEGATES specific access to manage constructs with specific tags, aka allow them to add people to policies relating to those tagged constructs. Effectively allowing you to create sub-managers that could be used to help manage military fleets, haulers, scan ships... gas stations... whatever needs a "Management" roll and the ability to give out RDMS rights within a limited scope surrounding specific tags. Pie in the sky: Would also like them to finally add a "Duties" part of the rDms. and timed policies. For example pairing that with the warp beacon RDMS suggestion you could temporarily give access to an org to be able to warp out to a beacon on an alien core, but only for a limited time (for example, during an "invasion" giving allies the ability to use your beacon) or potentially charge for access. *Edit to add* You could also add RDMS for showing a players/construct on the map. For example, like the "two way" proposed RDMS policies for giving and receiving warp beacon access you could also do the same for showing a ships location in world/on the map. For example, this would fix the issues of the friends list in game being used to track people.... as you'd have to give them explicit rights to do this. But mostly, this would make fleet battles easier as you could potentially give allies the ability to see constructs in world past their radar range if they were "Friendly" and shared the RDMS rights. (past that, we need a way to "share" radar information for fleet battles, but I digress) *End of edit* It's funny to think how these "boring" RDMS changes would drastically impact the game, you'd more effectively be able to lead "War" efforts... setup special warp beacon networks, have "generals" with proper access to manage their war machines.... could create proper managment rolls for orgs to... organize. And overall make warp-beacons work as they should. As it is now, we don't have the tools to easily/effectively manage orgs of hundreds of people; the current tools start to break down past small groups of 10 or so. RDMS almost never gets the proper love it deserves, it's arguably one of the most powerfully unique and under-developed features in DU.