Steffstoff

Hello Noveans,
 
Many thanks to all of you who have been with us from our Kickstarter campaign. We appreciate your support and your patience and would like to update you on the status of the rewards you have been waiting for.

THE PHYSICAL KICKSTARTER REWARDS
 
Production on the Dual Universe figurines and the Collector Box is complete. However, there are two challenges in shipping them:
 
First, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the price of shipping has risen significantly. It has reached a point where sending the rewards would cost as much as producing them. We had hoped that these price rises would only be temporary, but we now know that they won’t decrease in the short to medium future. We’ve therefore taken the decision to absorb the increased cost and to move forward with shipping the physical rewards. The second challenge has come from our partner responsible for handling the shipping of the physical rewards. They’ve recently informed us that they won’t be able to complete the task. We are therefore searching for a new partner to take receipt of the physical rewards and to start shipping them to you as quickly as possible.     THE VIRTUAL KICKSTARTER REWARDS
 
Both the Kickstarter Founder Packs and the Supporter Packs will be released throughout the milestones of 2022 in Dual Universe. We’ll give you more concrete details on exactly when you can expect each part of those rewards packages to be released in the months ahead.

Your support and patience mean a lot to all of us at Novaquark, and the delivery of your Kickstarter rewards is one of our priorities. We thank you again for your support and will update you with more information as quickly as we can. 
 

I like the changes. I agree with others. The warp effect could benefit from being toned down. One other major visual thing that I would love to see tweaked is toning down the shield visuals. Like having it only highly opaque when you are taking fire / in combat. It makes the game look really bad when you have a bunch of parked ships with giant glowing bubbles. The general look is okay just it is so evenly opaque and very bright. So much so that you can't even see how cool the ship designs are.
 
I feel like most of NQ's art decisions would benefit from a pass that just reduces the contrast, brightness and opacity of many effects by about 50%. Good effects like sound design, if you do your job well players do not notice your work. It just feels right as a whole. Less is more IMO.

Oh hi again.

I honestly believe a full wipe will benefit almost everyone who is on stand-by, reading and not playing.  I do believe some players will be pissed if they wipe everything.

Our main concern should be: "What NQ can do so we have 1k+, 5k+, 10K+ players in DU after release?". What you have atm in game can be translated in Know-How. The info you have is there and wont be lost. No matter what everyone can say, post release Legacy Blueprints (from this version) can be an asset which can be sold post-wipe for income (and some will think its not fair).

A full wipe its the best option imho.

Another important question is:

Why should i play DU? What kind of game post-release DU wants to be? We will create again cities and ships and fight with nobody for months? Do we create Second Life environments and spend time there? Whats the high risk - high reward stuff DU has atm and will have post release? Afaik no planetary base/city raids, full safe zone in space, etc.


 

NQ What interests me as a player is to play.
Playing in an MMO is about overcoming obstacles alone or with other players.
Playing in an MMO in beta is helping a game in the making or during this beta, it can have big changes (you have to accept big changes even if you have paid a beta subscription).
Playing Dual Universe in beta means believing in the future of this game and not counting its quantas, its talents, telling yourself about it.
To play after the WIPE announced by NQ is to believe that many new players will arrive and will not leave too late with the beta players. It is the arrival of many players that will allow NQ to continue paying for the servers on which DU is installed. Right now, I don't think there are enough of us to pay the bills (otherwise NQ wouldn't have put a subscription on the beta).
So if your amount of quantas or talents or construction is more important than the future of Dual Universe, it means that you are not a fan of Dual Universe but simply a player who wants to consume the game.
If NQ does not make quantas, talents and constructions disappear because too many beta players want to keep their achievements and want to keep a superiority over new players, new players will not come in droves and DU risks not surviving long time.

Here is my take on the points brought forward by NQ, it took a while to read through all the other posts and form my own reply. I have not been an avid responder on the forum but please consider the following:
 
On the premise that
NQ fixes known bugs and exploits. NQ actively prevents, punishes and reverts exploits in the future. NQ creates a somewhat stable and equal economy (we were getting there). We paid to PLAY the game. Our gains like quanta, ore and inventory should not be a given right. Persistence of our intellectual creations (blueprints) is preferable. Our real live investment (time, money) should be considered. There should be no more wipes from here on out. Make sure the game is interesting enough for veteran and new players alike.  
Factors under consideration
Removing unpopular things: I see no need to do this. Please keep schematics, they work fine. Fix things that need fixing Resetting the game economy: I can really see the benefit of this. Let us become industry moguls on a level playing field. The wealth created during beta is void. Experienced veterans: Please don’t take away our nice experiences, encounters and joy we had playing. Right start for new players: Sure, Let them do the FTUE and grind like we did. We can help them. Persistent blueprints: Sounds like a very good idea, please make them progressive: You can deploy them with just a core and then “fill” them with voxels and elements. Planet revamp: Please go right ahead and create something truly nice for us. Be generous in helping those who will be inconvenienced.  
Alternatives:
No wipe: An option, but it would create an immense balance problem. Unfortunately I say no. Partial wipe: Keep only voxels, remove elements. Do planet revamp and allow a one time magical blueprint for affected players. Help them relocate. Feels like a little of nothing on all ends. Legacy server: Double the cost, half the players. No. Full wipe: Starts to feel like the best option but you need to compensate players for the time and money they invested already. Keep blueprints for everyone, remove quanta and talents but give them something back for every month they played or paid, from those "rewards" we could buy back talents and/or quanta, at players choice. No idea how much this should be but somewhere between sufficient and all.  
Some possible perks for veterans would alleviate the pain for me:
We can claim a starting location before release (Aphelia claims a ring of tiles around a market so no one has that benefit) We get to keep one basic XS ship, think double pocket speeder allowance with space capabilities to start off with We get the old element textures (yellow containers, etc.) as skins to show our mark of veterancy We get some pocket quanta and talents to spend. That's it, thanks.

In all fairness there are a lot more safeguards now. For example we have officially rules on exploiting, a dedicated support category for reporting them, better logging capabilities, and most importantly a PTS server to catch problems early. So while it is still possible for another exploit to one day sneak into the live server, NQ is more prepared to deal with it. Furthermore now that the rules actually exist, players will generally be less inclined to abuse clearly broken mechanics. 

The big problem are not the grind or exploits of the past. The real problem is how players used new features, like it never was intended. NQ has changed a lot in the last year. Every time a new thing was annouced the players have looked for a way to exploit it. That's okay in the sense of testing. But it hurts the game intention in a finished version. Why ? The "exploit" way is a cascade. Every advantage you gain from one patch rise the advantage on the next. And yes, same features are never was intended to be finished. There was/ is a first version to give NQ feedback to this topic. To remember: The game is in a beta. We are tester, not gamer. So it's ok to test and exploit something. Grind like hell to test the balancing of the game is ok too. But after this the developer must have the possibility to draw conclisions and fix the mess. In this sense: Full wipe pls.
 
Your complain is not the wipe, it's missing pvp activity. For this we need more players. A lot more new players.  With this the rare t4/t5 MU spots on planets are not enough and you will see more activities at the asteroids and in space.

Gonna be sad to loose my massive underground base,  but my corp mates are all planning to return after a wipe, so happy to have people to play the game with, and am generally happy to start again.

Just want to remind to everyone that any game's value is an entertainment you have while you play the game. You did something - you got entertained, you achieved something - you entertained. Wipe does not change that entertainment gain.

been here since beta release got this to loose:


and I am not going to stop playing DU even if they wipe everything, because I do not see why the game will not keep me entertained.

FULL WIPE............PLEASE!!!!!

TOTAL WIPE but create a healthy economy before release.
 

Full wipe is probably the only way I'm coming back, and I was playing EARLY. We've seen too many exploits and unfair advantages gained through them.
 
Full wipe everything. Start it over. This is probably the last chance you're going to get to do so with such big changes coming.

at the start there was a hand full of exploits that bad apples in the community exploited to gain billions of quanta creating mega factories within the first day or 2 of the game launching. NQ tried to cover their [filtered]up by trying to sweep it under the rug as there was a non disclosure agreement for alpha play.  why would anyone play a game that operates in this manner?
only way forward is to do a wipe and publicly state if you exploit all your accounts linked to you will be perma banned all assets wiped and if its a alliance doing it as a whole then all alliance members get banned and all assets wiped. it must be in the rules

lol it had extreme effects on other players people in massive cubes blowing us up when we had to slow boat this is a PVP game 
EDIT: also it wasnt just a few people it was several corps

my group comes back after wipe we quit due to the extreme amounts of exploits creating a unfair advantage. others i have spoken with are also coming back with a wipe one of those groups has close to 150 people.

Here are some of my thoughts:
 
For this game's long-term future, I believe a reset is essential. With a robust marketing round, more players should arrive, like at the start of Beta.
 
I believe that planet revamps, radical rebalancing, etc. will pay off much more in the long-term (for years), and draw in more players than otherwise.
 
Speaking years into release, the game will require a very high population to maintain the vision to its fullest extent. Regardless of whether you wipe or not, years in, you know you will require a robust marketing campaign to achieve this population, with a high percentage of the population being post-beta players,. I believe that years from now, the presence of all original Beta players will be fairly insignificant in the grand scope of the gameworld.
 
I think of it this way:
Reset: lose a portion of current players No reset: maintain current players, however sacrifice many potential new players in the long-term of the game So, either way, there is a loss of some sort. I believe of the two, a reset is the safer route.
 
The game seems to be hanging on for dear life and we need to take a risk to guarantee long-term success. I merely think that for this game's prosperity, a reset is necessary.
 
It may be unethical, however otherwise I'm fairly concerned for the future of the game.

I would suggest for almost full wipe:
 
Must:
Schematics
The schematics are here to stay or a similar mechanic needs to be in place to keep progress in check. They were crazy expensive and it should be like that. Without them you go from start to end game 1 - 2 weeks time. In that case it has no use to wipe otherwise the wipe will be an annoyance and no use at all. 
 
Bps:
Keep the BPs so people can rebuild their crafts again.
 
Mission randomization:
Mission randomization can be the ultimate solution to keep the it from being abused and keeping it dynamic to see the rest of the galaxy aswell instead of several places. This will also make it less predictable where the missions runners are going and coming from. Only refreshable every 24h
 
Also I would like to see a clear vision on planetary warfare so people can choose where they are going to live and if that would be subjective to a loss in the future.
 
Nice things to have as a beta player:
5 - 10 % talents points tranfser:
A bit of talent points tranfer would be a nice thing for the existing players. With this amount it would be only beneficial at the start and this will diminish to almost nothing in a year time. So the beta player wont be totally empty handed by being a tester.
 
Extra starting money could be a thing, but it should be big enough to provide a bit of extra funds to get it going, but it shouldnt be too big to give a huge advantage. So if that would happen max 50k - 100k of T1 worth of ore should be the bonus. Otherwise leave us peasants struggling to get out of the dirt.
 
I enjoyed the few days of the early game at the start of beta and I would enjoy it more if the systems now in place were there. Giving the game a better pace with the schematics and the ore extraction rates. With this the game / economy will be growing more organic.

Following our policy of being as transparent as possible and to keep everyone informed, we want to give you some insight about the internal discussions the Novaquark team has on the delicate topic on whether we’re going to have a wipe or not, and under which form. The discussions are numerous, as there is no easy answer and we have to take into account all of the pros and cons for each possible solution. We also have been taking into account the players discussions which have happened - and for some, are still happening - on Discord and our official forum. On one hand we have you, our early backers and players, who supported us for quite some time now, and we want to renew our thanks for being so patient and passionate about Dual Universe. On the other hand, we have the constraints of making the game appealing to new players.
 
Please note: By “new players”, we mean players who’ve just heard about Dual Universe, but we also have many backers that have chosen not to participate during Alpha and Beta, so they can begin playing once the game has reached a polished enough state with game mechanics.
 
SO, WHAT ARE THE PARAMETERS WE HAVE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT?
 
We know that players have repeatedly asked for an answer to this question. It has been on the table for many months, if not since the Beta opened. The team has been discussing many options on the topic and we’ve gone back to the drawing board many times. Here is an overview of the factors that we are taking under consideration:
 
A reset would be an opportunity to remove things that have been deemed very unpopular by the already existing community, such as the schematics. The only way to remove them in a clean way without causing too many disturbances in the economy is clearly when the in-game economy has been just reset.
 
Many tests/adjustments during Beta have impacted the in-game economy, leading to have some players getting extremely rich way faster than intended, due to an intensive use of some features in their early stage, such as the mission system (and that's understandable, as the situation is part of a normal process in the development of a game). However, it's also common practice in the game development process to usually have some kind of reset when critical milestones are reached, and resetting the economy to have a healthy start once the game has been stabilized and the game features have become more balanced makes sense.
 
As you, our current experienced players, will have quite an advantage compared to the new players on many levels (game knowledge, talent points, wealth, constructs already owned), there's a need to make things a bit more balanced to give a fighting chance to the wave of new players that will join the Community later.
 
We also want to give all the players (new players as much as a big part of the early backers who have waited for the game to be in a fairly polished state) to have the opportunity of the right start.
 
In case of a wipe, finding a way for our veteran players to allow them to keep (or rebuild quickly) their favorite constructs, without creating any loophole for players to bypass the reset (and defeat the purpose of why it’s done).
 
Some planets currently do not have the quality and polished state the Novaquark team wants to give them. We also have seen that a part of the Community has the same opinion on the topic, and this is why the dev team has been planning a revamp for the planets which haven’t received one already.
 
WE CONSIDERED SEVERAL ALTERNATIVES SO FAR TO REACH THESE GOALS:
 
- Doing no wipe at all.
 
Pros:
Satisfying for some of our long-time builders and traders Cons:
Unsatisfying for players wanting to discover the game and start with a more polished version of the game. Does not allow to remove Schematics properly. Does not allow to revamp the old planets properly. Does not allow the rebalancing of the economy properly. Potentially keeping bugs related to very old Constructs.  
 
- Making a partial wipe where the economy would be wiped, but not the Constructs, which would keep all player-made creations intact, with also in mind to prevent some players from storing resources on said Constructs to circumvent the reset of the economy.
 
Pros:
Relatively satisfying for some of our long-time builders. Cons:
Extremely complex to put in place properly without the known loopholes interfering (such as piling up Resources and Elements on existing Constructs before a wipe and removing them after to sell them). Unknown loopholes could break the wanted healthy economic reset. Does not allow to revamp the old planets properly. Potentially keeping bugs related to very old Constructs.  
 
- Having a “legacy” live server and a new live server, where only the blueprints made before the new server opening would be transferred to the new live server.
 
Pros:
Could prevent any wipe with this solution while managing issues the dev team is trying to solve. Cons:
Opens a number of new issues server-side. Would split the Community.  
 
- Having a full wipe (except blueprints) with solutions to make old time players able to rebuild their favorite Constructs quickly through various means.
 
(Here are a few examples of discussed ideas to reach this goal: for our veteran backers, starting pool of talents points and/or quanta, resource multiplier event right after the reset, etc.).
 
Pros:
Prevents loopholes for an economic reset compared to a partial wipe. Most efficient, proper way to remove schematics. Most efficient, proper way to handle a planet revamp. Cons:
Some possibilities discussed could be seen as an unfair advantage.
Keep in mind, if the above solution is decided on, that an improved version of the Blueprint / Construct deployment tool available to all players will be implemented in-game at the time (or maybe even before) such a solution would be applied to the game.
Such improved version will enable players to have:
A preview of the Construct before deploying the said Construct from a blueprint (this feature should be available with Athena release). An ability to auto-align the preview of the Construct on an already deployed Construct (this feature should be available a bit later after Athena release).
   
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Though this may seem to be a long explanation, it’s a (very) short description of everything the Novaquark team has discussed so far on this topic. So stay tuned, and we thank you again for your patience and support. As mentioned before, our decision will not be made on a whim, but will be made considering and pondering all of the factors mentioned above.
 
Let us know your thoughts on all this here!

FEEDBACK

The new trees and stones, well, i have to see them ingame before I can judge. Sounds good, so far.

The cone voxel shape is one of the needed new shapes. Still waiting and hoping for torus, and also for HOLLOW sphere and other hollow shapes with only 1 voxel wall thickness.

The new delete (and hopefully also COPY) looks promising.
 
Still needed for the upcoming new patch is a solution for the over-crowded, crash-causing markets. Something like allowing drone delivery, or BPing automatically after 15 minutes each parked ship then deleting all  voxels and elements, and restoring ship when player wants to leave. In the case of BPing, a new way need to be found for those players that want to offer services or products or who want to advertize (maybe a huge ring-shaped platform like a streetmarket around the colonizer ship memorial).