blundertwink

PvP doesn't have inherently more merit than PvE and the implication that it does is really tiring. If you really want skill-based PvP, try playing a game engineered and balanced for PvP, because DU is hardly the epitome of skills-based PvP. It barely holds interest for most people for a reason. It's like there's this implication that if you don't want to PvP it means you have no skills or are too emotional to "play the real game"....which is a baffling attitude in this of all games, where PvP is an obvious afterthought, shallow in both skill and strategy, and immensely non-performant. "When the game works better" isn't an excuse by the way, it's an obvious reality to anyone that's ever played this game. No one needs an "excuse" to avoid engaging in a game mechanic that's boring, poorly designed, non-performant, or simply not fun. If there is a group of players that's too "emotional", I think we know which group it is...but most PvP players are reasonable and realize that enjoying PvP doesn't make you any more or less of a "real player" especially in this shoddy little game where combat is mostly terrible.

It is sad. It also makes very little sense to me. They're sabotaging their own PR and it's bizarre -- whatever damage they believe would come from announcing a wipe is minuscule compared to the lack of engagement on this topic breeding wide discontent and mistrust (not to mention bad reviews). NQ's had a reputation for not engaging the community for a long time now....which is a choice they've made, many times over many years. They don't think players have much to offer -- they think we're "know-it-alls" with too many opinions that don't understand how hard their jobs are. It's easy to take criticism personally, but professional companies know how to push those personal feelings aside and process customer feedback to improve their product. Their inability to process feedback or engage with their own customers is really obvious in the state of their product today. Painfully obvious. Players on release will boot this up and believe that it is fresh from a tiny dev team, not that they've spent 6+ years in dev and 2 years in beta. NQ shouldn't be shocked if the game gets bad reviews as soon as release drops...it may be the only way this company finally cares about customer engagement.

I would suggest that Sanctuary's big numbers were driven by the initial public beta launch. Things were busy back then -- the game actually had a large number of players joining. Around 40,000 is reasonable in that context. I'm not saying alts haven't contributed, but I'd guess that ~40,000 is an okay ballpark estimate for how many people joined public beta in the early days. It wouldn't surprise me if it was substantially more, since many of them didn't get past the "speeder phase". Even paying for a longer sub, I think most of them didn't play more than a day or two. Good thing the new FTUE fixes this by giving players a tile and outpost as their first thing...! That won't lead to clutter and lag at all...!

The exchange makes a certain sort of twisted sense -- because the game isn't going to be performant enough to handle player-run markets. It's the same strategy as alien cores and asteroids -- NQ spawns the stuff because the game doesn't want to handle players meeting up in anything other than designated zones. They know player-build markets would be better...but they probably fear what popular player markets would do to performance. Just as they know space TW would be better than alien cores...but again, that would mean more player interactions outside NQ's control and therefore more cost. These might not be solvable issues to be honest....NQ knows they aren't about to get a million subs on release and their making choices based on cost accordingly. They are actively avoiding features they know would be popular because they don't want to pay huge infra costs to support them. IMO....they kind of know that release will bring new players that don't stick around for very long. In that context, they want to lower costs so that some new player that only sticks around for 1-2 months still generates positive ROI, and that means limiting cost as much as possible, as we've seen with the last few updates.

Yeah, I hear you there....but at the same time, 'player driven everything' was always going to be a tall order with the way NQ imagined it. NQ decided to equate "a world driven by players" with "a world without NPCs" and that was never going to work from a design perspective. NPCs fill a lot of roles in a typical MMO -- they drive combat and conflict and the economy. They drive narratives, give quests, sell items, and "print" currency. They fill out an otherwise empty world. In DU, they obliterated the concept of NPCs without ever replacing them with any equivalent system. The missions system is a joke. The ability to set up your own market? Not even that. PvP? Riiight, such a wildly popular and slick feature, that... 🤷‍♂️ In many ways, their quest to make the game "player driven" was counterproductive from the start. It started as too vague an idea with no details and therefore the result is this...shell of a thing that isn't a cohesive game at all. I do think a "player driven" game would would work, but only with player-controlled NPCs....even then, it needs at least one powerful NPC faction to ensure that the game is fair for new players and to enforce balance (especially in a single-shard environment!). An MMO where players shape the world and build civilization is a fantastic idea....but that doesn't mean you throw the concept of NPCs in the trash because in reality they are very much required for any MMO that hopes to capture the first 'M' in that acronym. I respect NQ for trying to innovate in their design, but some of this innovation really set them down the wrong path from the very beginning and there's no finding the right road now. They can only make the best with the journey their on.

Not really a viable solution, though -- it isn't like it's easy to spin out a separate stack, alter the rules for one server only, create the UI to allow people to select a server, etc. The work to "turn on Atmosphere fights according space rules" could take a very long time by itself. If it seems like it ought to be simple, it probably isn't...especially for a software stack that's 6+ years old. Further, this would have a huge impact on cost. Not just with spinning up a separate batch of hardware, but with how the game scales. They made alien cores and asteroids work the way they do for a good reason -- DU has never handled combat in a performant way and more PvP more places with more players could make the game unsustainable, especially with today's level of optimization. Even if players did flock to these PvP servers...would it mechanically work? Could it scale gracefully? I'm not optimistic it would. There's been so many changes even to the vanilla game focused on infra cost...even the game as it is today probably won't scale! And that's with very limited instances of PvP or player interact in general. Spending months to create a "trial" doesn't really make sense, and yes it would take NQ months to make this a reality. They wrote this game with the presumption of single-shard and introducing server-specific mechanics wouldn't be a quick thing. It's just too late for them to even consider going down this road.

Well....that's not really an example of emergent gameplay. That's an example of classic gameplay. Emergent gameplay is gameplay that arises from mechanics in ways the developer didn't explicitly implement. Alien cores aren't that...they work exactly as the devs intended. Racing in DU is an example of emergent gameplay, alien cores really aren't. This sentence...doesn't even make sense to me, but there's a love of false dichotomy when discussing valid criticisms of DU's implementation of PvP. The reality that PvP in DU is underdeveloped, buggy, not performant, and boring doesn't mean we loathe the concept of PvP. That's the classic false dichotomy -- "if you don't agree that safe zones need to be abolished, you hate PvP and therefore the game will fail". No, that's not it at all. Personally, I like PvP games -- but I play games designed for PvP where teamwork, skill, and strategy make all the difference. Games where your opponent has as much chance to win as you do. Games with mechanics designed around PvP and balance. DU isn't that. It isn't anything close to that. It's an obscure, niche implementation in an already-niche game that only will ever appeal to a highly niche group of players. You're allowed to believe ripping down safe zones will inexplicably and magically make this game popular...but calling everyone that doesn't share that view self-absorbed and "embittered" is exactly the sort of ad hominem that makes people think PvP players are childish. Anyone that's played DU's version of combat and believes "yeah, this is what will make the game popular!" is not seeing some obvious realities about the gamer market and the ability for combat in DU to support a paid monthly sub.

Always the same two things around here...if it isn't people arguing about a wipe, it's arguing about PvP. Now that the wipe has received 1500 posts with little hope of answers from NQ, it's back to debating about PvP. I don't get why there's such an obsession with tearing down the safe zones as if that's the only thing the game needs. Every piece of evidence and history suggests PvP is a niche activity within an already-niche game...combat in DU just isn't interesting to me. It's boring. It's slow. It doesn't perform well. I play a good amount of actual PvP games. I'm not risk averse or shy about competition or teamwork, and I do wish PvP in this game was better...but the actual mechanics just aren't developed enough. Combat in this game has very little depth. All that aside, removing safe zones is kind of a moot point when there's no prospects of territory war. Why does it matter where there's safe zones when there's literally nothing to fight over...? Alien cores are DU's only version of territory war for the foreseeable future. Alien cores might be the only version of TW that DU will ever see, period. I see no evidence that they'll magically resolve the many performance issues around combat, and unless they do there's no way they'll roll out TW universally. Maybe we'll see TW in space someday. Big maybe. TLDR: It's great if you like PVP, but IMO it isn't nearly developed or mainstream enough to "save" this game.

I hope NQ actually moderates a bit, because this sort of post is so needlessly hostile and arrogant and so clearly against the terms of use. You aren't capable of determining who is a cheater based on the tone of their post. You don't get to silence people because of your puzzling, evidence-free belief they are a cheater. Stop with the personal attacks -- there's no reason to get so angry and certainly no reason to attack anyone like this. It's hard to believe any of your "arguments" are based on anything other than your emotions with reasoning like this. It's just plain rude.

NMS built their initial product with about a dozen employees over 3 years, including creating their own engine tailored to the game they wanted to create. This is the difference experience makes -- it doesn't matter how accomplished JC was in robotics and AI, he was a novice in gaming. By contrast, Murray was already an experienced developer when he founded Hello Games with two other experienced developers. They knew how to build games from the start. JC made a basic prototype and believed he could create an MMO from it...that was hubris, not ambition. DU's problems start at the very beginning as they so often do. We're far beyond "the design of this game needs to change" at this point -- at this point, I'd be surprised if the game was able to physically run on release, never mind if people actually stick around for more than 1 billing cycle.

Yeah the number of players today is....not great. I agree that no one will get super excited about LUA refactors, but this again speaks to NQ's quest to reduce infrastructure costs (has been a main focus since they added auto-miners!) as much as humanly possible. I think they are concerned about the game scaling knowing that most new players won't stay for longer than 1-2 months....if it costs them money to acquire those users (e.g. via ads) it's very easy to imagine those new users costing NQ money instead of earning them money...hence why they're cutting costs as much as possible. So I agree that they need to focus on feature depth and that they've needed to focus on that for months and months now...but they're still stuck trying to get this thing running efficiently enough to generate any sort of revenue and I think even with all their efforts here the game will not run well on release...

You're basically saying that PvP is already fun enough it just needs to be more available. I don't really agree with that. I think combat is far too niche to satisfy the typical PvP-oriented gamer, regardless of how common or restrictive it is. Even if NQ wanted to make this sort of "simple" change, they probably couldn't without jeopardizing an infrastructure that's already vastly unstable and doing major refactors to the codebase...I mean they couldn't even roll out space TW and had to relegate that to alien cores. It isn't as simple as them "turning on planetary combat" -- with how this game has been engineered, that could mean a lot of refactors. Your suggest is basically to roll out TW everywhere and make atmo combat work...they couldn't even roll out space TW and had to do alien cores, so I think the challenges here are immense for NQ. I don't think they can support this vision of combat technically, at least not right now. It might seem these changes would be low in scope, but unfortunately I don't think that's the case.

Regardless of if you think the idea has merit or not...it isn't like NQ has some simple switch to "turn on PvP everywhere". Granted we don't know how NQ coded different mechanics for in-atmo and safe zones, but based on the way they run things...? I think it's safe to assume that features aren't so flexible. So IMO the point is moot because we all know NQ can't just "turn it on everywhere". Reality is they have to focus on bug fixes and performance to prepare for release -- even if they wanted to, they wouldn't have the time to develop this just to experiment. Also, they have been having performance problems for a while now and global PvP will only make that worse. If they wanted you to fight anywhere, they would have implemented proper space TW instead of alien cores. So in addition to NQ lacking the ability to do this with the limited bandwidth they have before release...they wouldn't want to do it anyway because more PvP means more server load and they are really not about that right now. I guess no one told them that a key part of MMOs is player interactions because they just see it as expense.

And that's the core of the problem...NQ's original "idea" for DU was way too ambitious for the resources they had. DU needed a niche...but instead it promised to be a great place for builders, PvP'ers, politicians, pilots, traders, industrialists...when you reach so wide, sometimes your arms break. I'm not saying DU is better off without PvP...but as a small studio, they needed to pick a niche and stick with it because they never had the means to create both a great building sandbox experience and an engaging, robust PvP layer and make the two ideas gel. NQ may not be "indie" with over $20 million in investment, but far more simplified MMOs are built with over 10 times the budget...they needed to focus on one niche/player group instead of obsessing over this fantastical metaverse ideal where "everyone can find something to do". The feature depth required to really bring balance and satisfaction to both player groups was beyond NQ's reach, especially considering that the first years were led by someone with zero experience who didn't understand the difficulties they'd face. That set the stage long ago; NQ today can only change the props and the players, because there's no time to rewrite the script.

They're a scammy, awful company led by an irredeemable ass, with rates twice as high as industry standard because they know game developers don't understand web dev.... 🤷‍♂️

For someone complaining about "whining", that's all this post is. I wouldn't care if it weren't borderline hostile in tone. Like...if the point you're making is that this isn't real life and it's just a video game, maybe chill a bit yourself, too? Everyone's entitled to an opinion. It's okay to disagree. But enough with insulting people's intelligence or saying that their posts are BS/nonsense -- stick to the merits of the discussion and don't take things so personally...no one should care enough about DU to get angry.

I agree, the idea of DU is great and it's unfortunate the one of the few games to challenge the boring formula of MMOs has faced so many challenges. Innovation is hard. I also agree that a game like DU will eventually materialize. I believe it will get easier over time to make something like this, especially as technology around infrastructure improves. What DU has tried to achieve is no small thing -- and while they aren't so "indie" with >$22 million, they are indie compared to simple MMOs developed by big studios with over 10 times the budget. I think NQ made a lot of mistakes that would have been avoided if they'd had more experienced leadership from the start, but I do hope that the idea of this project endures in some way, shape, or form.

It's not so clear, though -- you're giving NQ way too much credit, here. It's odd to think of NQ as a studio that only cared about making a great game and it was those big bad investors that forced them to publish early. They had a set runway and spent 6+ years on dev...that ~$22 million wasn't going to last forever. I'm not saying NQ has a real choice, but it isn't investors "forcing them to turn a profit", it's the reality that they are running out of runway. Two offices in big cities with 50+ employees isn't cheap. That's not being forced by anyone, that's the nature of running a startup that they knew about from the beginning. Every startup I've worked at is obsessed with carefully tracking burn rate for a damn good reason. This is just how startups work and if NQ didn't understand that going in, they really can't complain about the outcome or blame it on the parties that gave them the money to begin with.

Why do you believe that? NQ explicitly said that Athena was the last major update before release and nothing they've posted since has contradicted this. The letter from the creative director only reinforced that the game is gearing up for release and that their primary focus is performance and stability in advance of this. The updates "promised" there have no timelines attached...

To be honest, the VCs that invested were taking a huge, uncharacteristic gamble. It's rare for VCs to back fresh startups with no history and no product nowadays. The early pitch must have been stellar and their greed for backing a sub-based product with the vague promise of "millions" of subscribers may have blinded them to the reality that this was an unproven studio led by someone with zero experience in gaming (and little experience in the private sector in general). Easy to blame investors, but DU wouldn't be a thing if they hadn't made a big mistake in investing. It would have been an even bigger mistake to keep throwing money at NQ after 6-8 years of development and the product still being clunky, unscaled, unpolished, and vastly incomplete. The push to bring DU to release is the CEO's call and has more to do with their remaining runway dwindling than investors pushing for profits. Running the company as if investors will keep funding it would be silly and arrogant. TLDR: This is one of the few cases in gaming (or in general) where investors backed someone with no experience in the field pitching a risky, ambitious, outside-the-mold product...I hate to say it, but they set DU up for success far more than investors normally do; it was NQ that bungled this rare opportunity.

They wouldn't compensate you with DAC. I think it would be fair for them to compensate you with free play time, but not via DAC because in theory the more DAC there are in the wild, the less value they have...so if they do hand out more DACs, they'll probably anger backers that spend hundreds or thousands to have a pile of DACs on launch (although I can't imagine most backers are all that happy, anyway). At a certain point you just have to step away -- sunk cost fallacy is a real pain, but does anyone really believe DU will ever actually launch the features discussed in the latest post? I mean actually develop the features, not implement an MVP and call it a day as they've done so many times before. Nothing has changed in how they approach the game's design or development in the last few years, I don't see any reason to believe release will change anything.

Not really, though -- people pay to buy early access games...and the most successful early access games like V Rising or Valheim (or other games starting with 'V'?) are more like betas. They are far more polished than the early days of early access. This is a completely, entirely different context than paying for a sub to access a persistent MMO. The only reason NQ was able to charge a sub to begin with is because they stated that there would be persistence from beta into release...few would bother otherwise.

"Complete work", heh. That's a good one. It isn't about the nature of alpha/beta, it's that this was a paid beta that charged a sub and they explicitly made persistence part of the value proposition. No one would be complaining if they had been clear from the start. Yes, many people saw this coming as an inevitability regardless, but it's understandable to be annoyed when a company says the product is in a playable state and will persist into release, then changes their mind. It isn't like early access where your one-time buy-in is good forever. It's a sub, the context is very different. People understand what alpha and beta are a lot better than NQ...it's NQ that's created an unconventional beta where they charged a monthly fee, stated there would be persistence, then changed their mind. Don't get me wrong, I don't personally care anymore (just get it over with), but I wouldn't say that people "don't understand what beta is" because they're complaining. It's NQ that doesn't understand how to run a beta. The only other MMO I've even heard of charging a sub before launch was Pathfinder Online. You can guess how that one ended up.

I don't agree at all that the wipe is their most important choice ever. I don't get how they are still "discussing" it. That betrays a profound lack of leadership if that's really true. The wipe isn't nearly as important as maintaining a stable volume of players so that NQ can (someday) get to the goals outlined in this letter. These ideas are for post-release, and there's no guarantee that they will materialize if the sub count never meets the basic minimum. NQ's most important, critical choices have already been made...the design of the game itself is far more critical than any wipe discussion, and that's where the game still struggles. The die has already been cast for DU and its "most important choices" are long in the past. All we can do is wait to see if release earns them enough subs, and I'm not optimistic that it will, which means none of the goals discussed in this letter are material.

I wouldn't personally describe the client as "robust" -- issues like this are unfortunately too common. Multiple people have complained about it here; to me, that means even more face this issue in the wild. When it comes to issues like this, even 2/100 people having an issue is really poor and will become a nightmare if the game can scale for release. I've worked on installers before...not removing every trace of the product on uninstall is a fundamental failure and likely the reason you're having issues. You shouldn't have to manually clear anything, yet NQ keeps telling people to do this because of flaws in the installer. I think the only thing you can do is file another support ticket and hope they have something else to tell you, and probably they'll tell you to uninstall again even though it may not help 😵