blundertwink

Totally normal for a game to become less stable and performance as it gets nearer to release......right? 😬

Ah, I love this. Name one game that was ruined by a bad review and please do establish a causal link between that bad review and poor sales. I certainly see how a post with 350 views (as of this reply) will kill a game that needs tens of thousands of subs to survive... Also, let's consider the various games that got truly horrible reviews but still managed to do very well: No Man's Sky had very poor reviews at launch but still sold well, even before it turned itself around Kinect Adventures was one of the worst reviewed Kinect games...and the Kinect itself was a major flop. It still sold over 20 million units. CyberPunk 2077 had plenty of review bombs...and sold over 18 million copies (20% of 2021 sales were on PlayStation where it ran so poorly it was delisted for months) SW battlefront has something like a 2/10 user review score thanks to EA's microtransaction nonsense...it still sold over 9 million units I get that many big titles with bad reviews are successful because of huge marketing budgets or tie-ins with other successful IPs, but my point is that I'm bored at work and wasting time replying to a troll. That's all that really matters.

I get what you mean, but don't think it's so simple. Clearly, making something 13 times harder doesn't mean players will stay around 13 times as long -- it depends on a lot of factors beyond "difficulty". In DU's case, is the effort required actually engaging and interesting? Or does it merely mean waiting around 13 times as long for auto-miners to spit out ore...? Or running more slowboat missions? Longer loops don't mean more engaging ones automatically. If the grind isn't fun, making people work harder is likely to reduce retention, not increase it. DU's grind isn't fun, it's a waiting game (either via missions or AMs), which means anything that requires quanta (factories need schematics) only demands more grind. Is it more difficult? Sure, but only because it's more monotonous...not because grinding quanta involves any activities of interest or skill. Players already have such limited agency in DU, a change like this would (IMO) make the core design issues even worse. With this change, players have even less control -- it'd be really puzzling how (and why) a game with no NPCs managed to make an economy run by bots.

Exactly how are they in breach, though...? The KS T&Cs say they have to try to deliver what they promised, and they promised and delivered X DACs. It doesn't matter if the value of the items they promise in each tier change over time, the terms simply don't cover that. It doesn't matter if someone paid $10,000 to get some special digital item that is sold for $20 a few years later...tough luck, but that's part of how KickStarter works and nothing in the terms protects against that sort of activity.

This is what they'll do. The KS said you get X DACs, that's the number you're getting and there's really nothing anyone can do about it. The value stated in the KS is completely arbitrary, as Blaze mentioned, these aren't a 1:1 value compared to subs because they can be traded for quanta. That makes the "value" stated in the KS very abstract, especially if NQ never gets to the point where they sell them. I don't see why 12 months of free play matters vs. 24 months -- it's such a long-shot that the game will survive 24 months post-launch, anyway.

I think NQ overestimates the number of players willing to AFK for 5+ hours...they're balancing against a small beta pop and people at release probably won't do this in such numbers that it "unbalances" an economy (which won't ever be balanced, anyway). What is the proper in game reward for being AFK and reading a book or doing chores while a ship slowly crawls across the void...? Of course, most of NQ's game mechanics involve being AFK, so I guess this version of being AFK is more risky than others and needs a better reward...? Is this really where DU is at, now...where every facet of gameplay is based on timers...so rewards are doled out based on how risky it is to be AFK...? Let's also be real about the motivation -- people being logged in for 5+ hours is more expense for NQ. They are all about reducing costs right now. They want people to play only enough to justify a sub, but not so much that it costs them more money...and the design of the game is reflecting this priority. Log in, check timers, do chores, log out. Actually want to play the game? Nah, that's not a priority. Those willing to spend some of the most boring 5 hours of gameplay in any modern game...? Not going to be rewarded for costing NQ more money. 🤷‍♂️

I already know NQ's line of reasoning here -- "we'll continue to update the game after release". Yet we all know their pace of updates...even when they are in an easier pre-release state! We also know that they don't like to even announce what they're working on... These two things don't work well for a sub-based game where DU has to prove its value month-after-month. So my point is that "post-release updates" aren't an inevitability -- even with another year of runway after release, that's only like 3-4 "big" updates for them. That won't be enough to fight churn on release, even if those updates are decent (they'll probably be focused on cost cutting and performance). Interesting that there's bandwidth to close threads talking about a wipe, but no bandwidth to update paying customers about what's going on...

Really impossible to not agree -- first impressions are formed very quickly by gamers and character creation is a huge deal to a lot of people. If you're going to invest time in an MMO, making a character "your own" is important. DU creates a series of bad first impressions that makes me believe release will go just as well as public beta. Lack of character customization alone might not be enough to make people quit, but then they get into the game itself (if it loads). They see a UI that looks like it was improvised by coders (and probably was). Bland visuals make the game feel dated. Initial gameplay that involves going back and forth to a market, which might be a considerable hike depending on when they join. It doesn't take much for gamers to roll their eyes at the wasted $9.99 and realize that the game doesn't meet the expectations created in whatever advert got them to sign up. DU doesn't communicate "quality" in the first 30 minutes. It still feels like it was made by a tiny team on a small budget -- that might not be a fair impression, but it is the impression that NQ has unwittingly engineered. These aren't hard problems to solve, but when it takes 45 days per decision, of course nothing ever gets done 😏

That would make for a better game, but 2024 puts them at 8 years of development...I don't see how they could afford another 2 years of runway...? They could do a soft release or label it "early access", but then that's just semantics....would still be a released game and they'd need to start marketing it. Expect a release this year. Maybe it won't come until winter, but I'm sure they were serious when they said that Athena was the last "major update" before release. I think at this point if NQ pulls it off and survives until 2024 everyone will be pleasantly baffled.

I agree 100% -- it really sucks that monetization now affects game design in this way. "You want the best stuff? Your in-game accomplishments aren't as important as your real life wealth..." I was purely talking from a capitalist perspective, which unfortunately drives a lot of the decision-making around what games get made in today's world of $100-200 million dollar AAA budgets that require investors. I actually wish more MMOs were sub-based, but sadly I expect that to be an exception vs. a norm unless MMO development becomes radically cheaper.

Alien cores are the best they could do with the tech they have -- DU just isn't capable of scaling technically, especially with them wanting to limit costs as much as possible. NQ's solution is control: they control where battles happen and how many battles can happen at the same time. Alien cores and asteroids are both examples of this. With this control, they can isolate PvP traffic and limit the strain on servers. IMO, the only way TW and PvP in general become more player-centric is if the game does well on release and they can afford to put more money into infrastructure...otherwise, I don't see any changes here and don't expect ground-based TW to ever be a thing (except maybe around more alien crap spawned by NQ).

I think the prime of the subscription MMO has come and gone. The transactional model where it's either free or a small buy in but no monthly sub is definitely is a robust, proven way to earn money. The calculation that many people have is that subs are "more reliable" because it ensures a "steady stream of revenue", but the issue is always churn. That's even more true in today's era of everything being on a subscription. People have limited bandwidth for these small monthly charges. Even the best subscription services have about 80% retention, so if you want to have that "consistent" revenue stream you still need a constant outreach effort to bring in new players or your populations will wither away. DU's inability to develop content quickly (or even tell people what they're working on lol) doesn't work well with a sub model because it encourages churn. Nor does its inability to re-engaged lapsed subscribers due to abandonment mechanics -- the design of the game seems to work against its monetization model. I'm not saying SC is the best version of this no-monthly-charge model (which definitely sucks for non-wealthy gamers), but they did make over $85 million in 2021...their best year yet. So their revenue is growing, release or not. I'm doubtful that DU will achieve even a modest 20,000 subscriptions...which is only ~$200,000/month in revenue and not nearly enough to support a staff big enough to maintain an MMO or invest in growth/advertisement. Even double this isn't enough, and at that point they'd need ~8,000 new players a month just to fight churn... Anyone optimistic that DU will achieve this? TLDR: games avoid sub-based monetization because it has many drawbacks, although I agree it is the best model for designing a good game because it sucks to design around monetization

Yeah, but every video of DU combat I've ever seen looks excruciatingly boring...that's just the way combat was designed in DU. I think people streaming PvP has negative or neutral marketing value for DU at best, but that's yet another thing we all know isn't going to be improved (even if only revamping the UI/UX here).

It's very clear that NQ considers alien cores the promised "space territory warfare". How do I know? It's literally labelled as "space territory warfare" on their patch notes here....

I admit I've wondered what it is the CM team does...the only consistent interaction I've seen from them is a few-minute weekly podcast that answers 4-5 questions that few people care about. Not much activity on reddit. Not much activity on Twitter. Not much activity here. How is it they "don't have enough time" when there's virtually zero engagement in any channel...? Are they making CMs do support tickets? I feel like NQ has a bit of an arrogance issue...they are the ones that decided to run a beta program and then ignore (or even resent) feedback. They love to complain about how "indie" they are, but they don't use the resources they have very well. They can't blame the lack of engagement on a lack of resources or time, they just don't want to do it. The end result is that they don't have an objective view of their game and refuse to believe players when we tell them what's broken.

I get that it isn't easy....but this isn't the point where they should be doing major performance fixes. Small optimizations? Sure...but even that is risky between the last major update and release. They've had 6 years to build their tech, but there's still major performance issues both client and server side...that isn't great. If the few players and their spread-out constructs aren't healthy for the server, I bet it'll do fine when thousands of outposts are spawned right next to each other then inevitably abandoned! 😅 I wonder if DU will ever "go gold" or if they will be pushing changes right up until the end. Everything seems to be in place for an exact repeat of public beta where performance implodes because nothing was tested at scale and where an ocean of abandoned constructs clog things for months until NQ realizes that their design doesn't scale. I am very skeptical that their core, fundamental tech will work at scale even with mining being ripped out.

It's just bad business -- and I really wonder where their new CEO is and what they are doing because it seems like nothing has changed. If they believe release will be a smashing success when they've sabotaged their own beta testing at the moment it's needed most, they are more arrogant than I thought. Do the wipe. Use that opportunity to see how FTUE scales with beta players, because I'm not at all convinced that mass-spawning outposts was load tested. I mean, did they learn from beta? That ocean of abandoned speeders? Giving every new player a permanent hex and an outpost might be a better FTUE but surely they see that they're repeating the same issue, right...? Give betas this head start to turn this into a "soft release" -- attracting new players over time instead of all at once on release day 0 (which will implode their poorly tested and optimized infrastructure). It's like they've never released software before (well as a company they actually haven't).

Not sure I agree with this idea -- when you make IRL money a factor it becomes inherently unfair as a game design. There's something a bit twisted about people grinding their butts off so they can (perhaps) trade their quanta to a rich person with a pile of DACs. Part of the allure of an MMO to me is the fact that it isn't like real life; you can become a top player with skill, smarts, and determination, which isn't how real life works. The tendency to bring IRL money into the game isn't a welcomed thing to me, especially for a sub-based game. DACs rewarded from KS are a different story because they are limited one-off rewards for early backing -- and considering that no one really expects that "lifetime sub" to matter much in a year or two, I think it's fair. The wipe isn't about a level playing field -- it's about presenting the game world as "new" because many, many MMO gamers like to join games on release day. That's part of the psychology of MMO gamers and is a reason many people joined the beta, too. Personally, I don't see this game staying online for more than a year post-launch, so I don't especially care if things are balanced -- and we all know that veteran players will quickly dominate, anyway.

The Kyrium tier costs 7,000€ -- so definitely not "160 free DAC" 😀 These people get a lifetime sub, so the DAC are only for alts or selling. I fully expect "lifetime sub" to really mean "1 year of beta and less than 1 year of release"; I'm not optimistic release will go well enough to keep the lights on. There were 6 people that backed at this level...I wouldn't be surprised if some of them don't even play anymore. 🤷‍♂️ Very very curious to know if anyone at the higher levels got that 1 hour conference call with JC and what was discussed, lol!

Based on NQ's linkedIn, there's definitely been turnover, but nothing akin to their entire dev team being laid off or quitting. NQ still has 6 job postings for permanent contract -- (which usually means full time employment with benefits AFAIK), not what you'd see from someone that laid off their whole team. The slow pace of development isn't a big surprise even with many full time devs -- it's an old codebase full of bugs and performance issues...and there's not a lot of devs that have experienced the entire 6-8 years of development with the project, which likely means corners of the code no wants to touch. Plus, we've seen how slow it is for their leadership to make choices...that filters down to devs, too. Hard to plan for the future from an engineering perspective when leadership refuses to plan the game's direction in a reasonable way. Finally, loss of morale is a huge thing -- if devs working on the game 8+ hours a day don't believe in it, they simply won't care. They'll do things in a sloppy half-assed way, not want to research or refactor legacy code, and just won't move as quickly in general. This is especially true if NQ feels the need to do crunch time -- oh you want me to work 10+ hours a day on a product that has an almost 0% chance of success...? Riiight, that's a sure way to make things slower and get even less than 8 hours of work out of people. TLDR: slow dev usually is a symptom of bigger issues, but doesn't mean NQ has sacked their entire dev team...

It isn't likely, but it happens. My former boss headed a mobile game company where their top customer spent millions on mindless micro-transactions. They bought so many that they had their servant spamming the buy button. For real. $10,000 worth of DAC might seem absurd (and it is) but wealthy people buy absurd things all the time. The DACs they don't give out they'd probably sell for quanta -- not a huge fan of the idea of people grinding quanta so that rich people can trade them game time...but that's how this works sometimes.

Just throwing it out there....but the "actual" value of DACs seems like a minor thing considering that they'll all become worthless if the game goes dark a few months after release. Won't be able to trade them early on because no one will have enough quanta, yet there's little point in holding them to use for subscriptions, since I'm doubting they have 40 months of post-release runway left. A lawyer would argue that a DAC isn't equivalent to game time, so their value is not simply equal to the value of a sub. NQ can easily argue that the "value" of a DAC is 18€ because they aren't available for sale and they can be traded in-game for quanta. That makes them distinct from subscriptions and the value far less defined. Granted...that idea does fall apart if NQ puts DACs for sale for less than 18€... Also, lawyers will cost a lost more than the €240 paid for the KS...

Someone around here will think that's actually a brilliant idea... 🤮 "Just put DU on the blockchain and the problem is solved" lol

Which is yet another odd choice by NQ, to be honest. NQ pays a third party for this forum that they rarely use...anything from $1k/year to $6.5k/year depending on their package -- which means they've paid at least $6,000 for this forum over the last six years...which they don't use for customer interaction and really never have. Almost all their interaction has been through videos or podcasts with very rare replies here...so what's the point? I strongly suspect these forums won't live forever -- wouldn't be surprised if they are shut down for release.

The only part of DU that will come back from the dead is old posts like these 😁