blundertwink

I agree overall that NQ is moving in the right direction, especially with improving their comms. Unfortunately, I'm not yet convinced that DU will be salvageable -- they have a lot of work to do in not so much time to prep this game for a release. A lot of their success will depend on how they market the game...My fear is that they will overreach with their marketing and attract a mess of players that quickly churn when the expectations presented in the adverts (build anything! make a civilization!) meet the game as it exists. Hell, I expect some gamers will churn solely based on the UI/UX still feeling intensely "indie"... ?‍♂️ I think NQ should be careful and go slowly with their marketing come release...but they will likely blitz as much marketing budget into it as they humanly can and make the game look as amazing as possible in their adverts. Of all the places for NQ to improve their communication skills...I think how they market the game at release will be the most critical. The new CEO might think they need as many new players as possible...but that approach might be counter-productive depending on exactly how they present the game.

This is a weird combination to me -- that the OP has somehow made "demands" about the game (in a post titled 'suggestions') and is even being selfish....because it doesn't fit with what you want for the game. Seems (to me) like you're saying that DU is your game and that the OP should go to some other "restaurant" -- but it ain't your restaurant, either...hell, even NQ doesn't know what type of spice they'll be cooking with come opening day. So idk, maybe don't take it so personally -- You have exactly as much "right" for the game to align with your playstyle and game design philosophy as anyone else... Beyond all that...there's many options for making some aspects of the game more accessible and "easy" without eliminating challenge. It isn't a zero-sum game.

I think it is obvious that nation-building or civilization of any sort isn't going to work very well in an MMO without carefully designed structures and limits. NQ would need to have an ongoing RP role within the game to make this work -- maybe they control the government or some hostile alien species. If any one org gets out of control...the NPC faction can rebalance the game without shattering immersion. The game would need DMs...I think it is unfortunate that MMOs don't typically have this sort of structure where staff have a role in facilitating RP because there is a viable middle ground between "player free for all" and "linear scripted storylines". Right now, DU has some of the worst immersion and lore of any sci-fi game I've ever played....even the premise of why people evacuated earth seems lazy. Humanity could have destroyed itself or rendered earth inhospitable...at least then there's a shred of narrative. A neutron star colliding with the planet? Why not something more plausible like a comet or asteroid? A neutron star would sterilize the planet well before it hits -- any ship escaping would need to leave long before it arrives. Beyond that admittedly small detail, it's puzzling that humanity's legacy is to create a society with zero laws on arrival -- space anarchy, but with taxes. There's no culture preserved, no lesson learned...just "hey we are here...let's build stuff I guess"... Which I guess is a fitting theme for the game...a lack of purpose and direction...

This is one of many examples of DU's "innovation" where some simple phrase like "players do everything" sounds interesting at first, but quickly breaks down when you think about the details. DU's choice to not implement NPCs might be the biggest driver of game design failures, overall. Making it so that all combat is only PvP is a bold choice that would require a very experienced designer to meticulously plan around... Unfortunately, with DU we got "novelty for the sake of novelty" rather than a planned, methodical design -- and people of course miss the typical gameplay that comes so easily when NPCs exist. The issue isn't the lack of NPCs per se but the lack of any other mechanic that provides similar engagement. They ripped out a huge pillar without having supports to replace it.

7 days is shorter than it needs to be. I get what people are saying about not paying attention to announcements being "their fault" -- but fault isn't really relevant. This is a basic customer satisfaction issue, and when customers aren't happy they tend to leave. It's a fact that the majority of customers aren't engaged enough to seek out NQ's announcements...that's how it goes for most games. Blame the customer if you want, but then you're basically saying "it is your fault that you don't care about DU enough to stay up-to-date" -- not a realistic sentiment. The only communication channel that can reasonably reach every player is email. If an important game notification doesn't go out via email, that's really baffling and incompetent. Email is the only comm channel NQ has for players -- everything else is a passive channel that requires players to seek out information...if we are going to be required to give NQ our email, they ought to use it properly. I don't think this concept scales especially well post-release, either...a 14 day timer seems more reasonable and will still have the same benefit in cleaning things up. I think some players will be caught by surprise at 7 days come release and NQ isn't in a place where they can be apathetic about churns...

The Metaverse is one of those annoying buzzwords that ultimately means very little. It is supposed to be an internet-like construct where VR/AR, e-commerce, shared workspaces, and gaming all collide in some sort of hellish digital soup. It is supposed to be "like" the Internet but ineffably different -- just don't ask for details, because people that like to talk about the metaverse don't usually involve themselves with pesky details. Based on past history, NQ's version of the metaverse would involve a lot of grand promises backed by no execution...but it could look very similar to the DU of today, only with a vastly more powerful LUA system and some sort of integrated payment system where users can buy/sell digital (or real life) goods. It would likely have real-world cost associated with land ownership. If I really had to distill the metaverse down to its most fundamental idea, it's that people want to sell you trash digital goods for real-world money. ?‍♂️ There's a reason Nike is investing in it; NFT-style games have already proven that people will spend $200+ on digital sneakers. They know that today's social capital is played out online...and want to exploit that down to the clothes you wear in a digital space. I don't envy the next generations of young people that get to feel as insecure about their digital avatars as their real ones...the premise of the metaverse as described in the original work (Snow Crash) was hardly flattering...and its like people are using the inequity and greed described in the novel as a template rather than a warning.

I feel like this is an issue with most open world PvP games -- because the "strategy" is to always outgun the enemy. This tends to be how it goes in all games without structured PvP. Much like real life, the correct strategy is to pick fights you know you can win vs. engaging in "fair" fights. That makes it boring and uneven for everyone, but is sort of human nature. This is why MMOs have structured PvP, instead. It isn't as realistic, but it makes for a more interesting game. This is one reason I hate when there's too much focus on realism. Realism doesn't always (or often) make for good game structures. In my opinion, there's no way to balance fully open-world PvP -- especially on a single-shard system where each ship is custom. Symmetrical, fair fights will likely be an accident vs. being the norm...no matter how they tweak weapons and defenses.

It would mean rewriting the entire game client from the ground up, and likely refactoring various server-side systems as well. I think the OP is a troll. New standards? I don't really get what that means, but "switching the game" to something like Unreal doesn't automatically make it more performant or graphically intense. I think people tend to overestimate the utilities in modern game engines. NQ would need to freeze all development for several years just to rewrite the game and get it remotely close to where it was, forging all manner of new bugs as they go. Any benefits they gain from the engine they would lose in opportunity cost, bugs, having to learn a new engine, and their doors having to close because they can't afford more years in the dark without launching a product

That's a pretty selfish attitude considering the context of what we're talking about: a "feature" that encourages you to not be playing the game for hours but still burn electricity. Unfortunately, the impact of gaming is a lot more than I usually care to think about. For most high end gamers like those that play MMOs (and leave them sitting for hours as nothing happens lol), you're eating more energy than any other household appliance except AC -- about 1100 kWh a year, while a modern washer will use less than a third of that. That's not even considering the energy cost of an MMO, which also eats energy server-side. Obviously I play games, I'm not saying you can't play games because of the environment. I'm saying that mechanics that encourage you to burn energy for literally no reason whatsoever are poorly designed. If our habit is going to burn this much energy, at least we should be actually playing and not AFK! Mechanics that encourage you to stay online for hours and hours just for the sake of it are stupid for so many reasons -- wasting energy is just one of them. Even if you don't care about the environment at all, this extra energy adds more than you might realize to your electric bill. Beyond all that, as I've said, any feature that is functionally identical to a screensaver is objectively bad design. Yes, it can be fun for some, but that doesn't make it a well-designed mechanic.

If you use the word "carebear" you probably don't have anything interesting or useful to say. Try articulating a point instead of reaching for lazy mischaracterizations. Childish slurs don't help you sound informed. They make you sound like an idiot. Most people that play DU recognize that PvP is vital as there's no other source of conflict in the game...and every game needs some sort of conflict to work. NQ is going to move PvP in whatever direction makes the most sense for them in terms of ease of development and mainstream appeal...There is no inevitable "toughening" of PvP or removal of safe zones because NQ isn't sure if that makes sense for the player base and longterm appeal. As of right now, that's still very uncertain. NQ isn't sure what directions to take PvP...even after 8+ years. If they were sure, perhaps we'd see some actual development instead of laughing at the myth of things like Avatar vs. Avatar or even Territory War. Hmm, vexing. Because PvP can't be discussed for five seconds before someone is calling someone else a "carebear" for articulating an opinion...I don't see many personal insults in the other direction (not as frequently anyway)...but regardless, childish behavior makes you look deeply stupid no matter your perspective. That said, I do agree that NQ has spent the vast majority of their time not developing PvP...and that's really the most fundamental issue with PvP. NQ just hasn't developed it.

Those 4 hours are burning energy (client and server) for no purpose. Besides being a bad mechanic, it's extremely wasteful. If you're going to use the electricity to play a video game, at least you should be playing it instead of AFK (using more energy for other stuff in the meantime...) I completely understand that some people have a lot of fun with this mechanic. That's why game design doesn't use "fun" as a term, because it's meaninglessly subjective. If slowboating must be a concept....at the very least players should be allowed to log out, shut down the client, and let the AI take over so that they aren't eating coal for their virtual ship to cross empty space. I don't know why people can't understand that this is an MMO in 2022 and NQ can't design this game like it's still 2001 -- if the only people interested are older ex-Eve players, this game will only face growing churn rates, because this is a demo that will never grow over time. It's not about instant gratification or the culture of gaming among the young, it's about market viability and a design that's better suited to a simulation game (single player or small scale MP) versus a sub-based MMO that lives and dies on carefully engineered engagement. DU has enough "waiting" as part of the core game. Wait to travel. Wait to mine. Wait to train skills. At a certain point DU is more of a screensaver than a game and that is a big issue. Travel is just another symptom of this puzzling design philosophy.

This isn't about coddling or things being "too hard". It's about a mechanic that literally has players AFK for hours draining electricity...it's about a core feature of a game being the same as a screensaver both in engagement and functionality. Besides, there's nothing remotely difficult about this mechanic where people would need coddling. This isn't about instant gratification or gamers being impatient. If anything, this is about slow-boating being too easy -- it's hours of gameplay where you sit and stare at the void. There's no easier gameplay than that, even Candy Crush is harder than that. Yes, slow-boating has a purpose in the game today. That's not really the point. The point is that it is a horrible game design mechanic by any standard of engagement. That it gets people from A to B without warp cells is indisputable...but is hours of AFK an engaging, novel, or marketable mechanic? Not by any stretch of imagination. You judge a mechanic by engagement, not by its function. NQ is trying to make an MMO. You don't have to love it, but that means they must attain a level of commercial appeal or it will remain a niche product of older ex-Eve players only...which isn't exactly a growing demographic. Crawling across the black for hours in real time might be immersive, but it doesn't make for a good game mechanic.

Any mechanic where the primary "engagement" is long periods of AFK is objectively bad. I get that this game already skews older, but if NQ were to embrace slowboating as a "default" mode of travel they sort of deserve to remain a highly niche product with a rapidly shrinking player-base. There's no game design rationale for such a concept. That would be like making a game about home decoration where you are expected to watch the paint dry because it's "realistic" that way. Or making the Oregon Trail, but you have to sit and watch the wagon move for hours between events. The idea that slow-boating is the only mechanic that provides risk is irrelevant -- there's infinite ways they could add elements of risk without this wasteful, antiquated concept. Does NQ not realize that people under 30 play a lot of video games and have a lot of disposable income...?

Slowboating is an antiquated mechanic that needs to go away. Space travel doesn't need to be instant, but any mechanic where players afk for hours is objectively horrible. Beside being an obviously bad game mechanic, it's a waste of energy. Client and server both eating power to move a virtual ship slowly through space for hours (often as the player does something else) is not a wise use of electricity. The only justification I've heard for this underlying idea is "realism", which isn't a very good reason for game design.

Since you're an expert, how about posting one of your game designs here so we can see your overwhelming talents and see how someone that "understands game design" does things? Or...maybe stick to ideas on their merits instead of grade school insults. "You can say what you want, that doesn't make it true....but I'm going to call your idea terrible with no other explanation and that is true..." ?

It really does. I think it's good that NQ is improving on communication and very understandable that they need to push toward release after all this time. However, this means a window where feature dev isn't likely -- they'll be more concerned with bug fixes, polish, cost, and new player experience than new features. With how much tech debt they have, they'll need a code freeze months before release. My fear is that the push to get the game release-ready is moving the game toward an ultimate end. Let's say NQ spends this year revamping new player experience, fixing bugs, and polishing the UI/UX. The game doesn't gain many (if any) new features. The game launches in its cleanest and most reliable state ever. My guess? NQ will overdo it way too much with their adverts and thus create a really jarring, awful first impression when people try the game as it is. The company running the marketing will only care about conversions, not retention. All the stats will say that things are exploding thanks to aggressive adverts that make the game look fantastic...but then people will churn. Hard. Because the game won't match expectations and players will be reminded of that with each monthly charge. At this point, NQ enters a race between the expectations of release players and feature development. NQ isn't known for being a fast studio with their development and when they rush, it doesn't go well. This is the sort of race that NQ will always lose. Even if they implement territory war before release, it'll be a huge gamble to release -- not that NQ has a bunch of alternatives. TLDR: it feels a like a no-win situation. They can't spend more time finishing the game but I don't think the game as it is will lead to sustainability. I don't envy them at all. Best of luck to you NQ, I think this will be a tough year.

People have been criticizing JC for a very long time (well before he was replaced), it isn't some new thing -- it's clear that some people haven't been able to give up the arbitrary, random ideas he had and expects NQ to somehow unwind years and years and years wasted under the leadership of someone with no experience in the field. It might not seem productive, but when changes come up that players don't like, remember just how long this project was mismanaged for...that mismanagement will affect NQ for a very long time. So when people see changes that conflict with the "original vision of the game" it's worth reminding people that this "original vision" wasn't based on reality, it was an expensive "Ready Player One" fantasy created by someone that had never worked in the field at any level.

100% -- it's arrogant to the point where it is almost insulting to people that have spent their lives learning the trade. I have nothing against people that make big swings...but you need some understanding of what you're doing. People with "cool" ideas are a dime a dozen, the difficult part is actually executing your idea. If you have no clue how to execute but decide to pitch that idea, get investors, market that idea to consumers, and take their money...? That's not anything visionary or honorable or decent in my mind. If NQ had someone in the room that knew what they were doing....and if JC actually listened to that person....yes, it would be a very different game. It probably wouldn't have taken 8 years and multiple refactors to core systems to get to a not-even-beta. The point isn't about blaming JC, it's about understanding that the expectations and design he created are pointless fantasies that simply don't make sense with today's technology. The ideas of what DU "was supposed to be" have to be left behind or at least dragged closer to reality.

That's fair -- personally, I think this is a Hanlon's Razor situation (never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence). JC wanted to declare that players in DU could reshape moons if they so desired. It was a bold selling point that an MMO game would not only support building at scale, but building at massive scale yet unprecedented in the genre. I don't think JC intended to "lie", I think he didn't bother doing any technical diligence and made a lot of incorrect assumptions about technology he most definitely had no experience with. Is that any better? Practically...no. In the end, it's very deceptive, intentionally or not. NQ said explicitly that finances are fine for right now. Tight, but fine. I don't think there's nearly enough alpha players in this category to be an issue. Most have churned by now, and those that remain are probably a minority -- and even if not, it's been made clear that NQ is making cost-cutting changes as a preparatory step for wider release...not because of their finances in beta. IMO...every beta player could quit tomorrow and NQ wouldn't really flinch, because betas don't really matter for NQ's future. Release does, and that's where they are focused. TBH I expect release to follow the same pattern as beta launch in terms of absurdly high churn...but maybe this time NQ has cut costs enough that even 1 month of sub is profitable. Not an easy feat -- ads in the gaming space are expensive compared to <$10 in revenue!

This is where I think NQ's math is going to be wrong, because they will likely based their average cost per player based on the people playing today. Come release, the actual average cost per player will likely be far lower, because most people coming into the game won't be as hardcore as the few players that are active now. But that's the correct approach...start with harsher limits and relax them as needed. As these updates show, people tend to react negatively to having something taken away once it is given. I agree with the idea that limits are unavoidable -- I mean come on....there's just no physical way to run an MMO sandbox game without some hard caps on building. There's a reason why sandbox games tend to focus on smaller-scale community-driven multiplayer. If you want to play an MMO sandbox, you have to accept that there will be limits to this medium that don't exist with other products in the genre.

An academic background -- academics have a reputation for not being especially interested in real-world business operations...I'd wager JC has never had to do much work in understanding costs with software because he comes from the academic world. Also, to my knowledge, his work was in AI/robotics; he'd have no experience in understanding software costs at scale for web-based technology. It's rather silly to suggest that estimating costs is "not possible" -- of course it isn't possible to obtain precise estimates, but that's not the goal. Any number of benchmarks could have helped develop a basic understanding. Beyond that, even a tiny amount of thought and experimentation would have made it really clear that "mole sim" was unsustainable. These geniuses didn't need to bury ore so deep...they decided to do that knowing it would cost more or they decided to do that without thinking about costs. Both are bad. Even we players that "know nothing" asked how the game could scale if clutter around markets piled up indefinitely. We wondered how the game could scale if tiles were aggressively claimed, leading new players to have to trek really far to use the market. We wondered how the game could scale to "millions" when even dozens trying to have a battle would cause massive lag. So yes, these are self-inflicted issues for NQ that should have been acted on years and years ago. All this being said....NQ could still turn profits without any of these changes. The issue is it would require a lot more subs before they break even. These changes will reduce the number of subs they need to break even...which might be wise, because I see no indication that DU will be able to grow beyond a few thousand subs. NQ has to make changes to survive with 10,000 subs instead of assuming they'll reach 100,000 or more...the math for profitability looks very different with 10k subs vs. 100k. Not great for the game, but hey....NQ is going to do what they gotta do to push this beast to the finish line, even if it means losing 99% of their current player-base...not like they have a ton of great options.

While I'm not so sure about how this is phrased, I agree with the sentiment. With over 8 years on the project now, it's really beyond stupid that it is only just now that NQ is actually doing the math on the cost of player scaling...when this is something they've been asked about dozens of times since the forums opens around 2016. It's like building a casino...but not doing any sort of calculations about revenue until after you're done...then realizing you didn't put enough slot machines on the floor and your casino will never work. Yes, it's a problem. Yes, it was your most fundamental job to figure this out. So now we have to rip out a big part of the floor and redo it because someone forgot that the purpose of a casino is to make money...of course, a casinos takes a lot less time to build than DU has, so I understand the analogy is not perfect. Yet again, NQ is stuck because JC didn't want to do any work to understand a vital part of the business early on. With that being said...NQ doesn't have a bunch of great options at this point. Either they raise prices or lower limits. IMO throwing more money at NQ in the form of higher subs is not appealing...for example, a $15/month sub is as expensive as any other AAA subscription MMO -- there's no way in my mind that DU will retain people at that price. Not with the quality of product they are offering in return. I do think NQ is likely overreacting some. Of course DU can't support each player using all 1000+ cores...but that's very, very unlikely to happen. Hell, that's being downright optimistic -- come release time, I expect something like 10-20% of players won't even utilize a single core...that they will churn well before that... ?‍♂️ TLDR: This was a very avoidable problem that NQ is overreacting to solve because they are too optimistic in thinking that "all the new players" will be building at scale when most will probably churn quickly.

I think the number of people that would be willing to pay extra for space to build is unsustainably low. That said, I also don't get how crappy mobile titles can compel people to spend hundreds of thousands on micro-transactions... At a certain point, it feels like I'd rather play a single player building game than deal with fees for the 'privilege' of being able to build the construct online; a monthly sub is already a lot of money for a gaming product, extra money on top of that is not appealing. The stupid thing is that this isn't some unknown, surprising concept that popped up with no warning. The cost to maintain player constructs is about the most fundamental and basic concept when it comes to scaling DU...the costs and revenue around this concept should have been understood many years ago. If NQ is just now taking a look at this math after 8 years, they kind of deserve what they get. People asked about how the game would possibly scale while maintaining costs years and years and years ago...

The grim reality is that DU can't be saved by more development. I think the new CEO realizes this. So...all the existing players don't matter in that context, because they know that they can't fix the game to the point where we will stick around. It isn't like there's enough of us to make that much of a difference, anyway. If they've given up on fixing the game through development (IMO they have a while ago), there's limited choices for keeping the lights on. One of those choices is to vastly reduce cost, then ramp up marketing as much as possible and call it a "release" -- if costs have been slashed enough, the mathematics around ROI just might add up such that growth is possible. Even with high churn, it might work to grow their revenue. This isn't great for the game, but it does make a certain sort of sense. If I were the new CEO, I might come to the same conclusion that no amount of dev will save DU...any CEO would probably come to that conclusion. I mean, the project is almost comically unfinished after 8 years and a sizable team...what else can they do other than trying to monetize this turd and limit costs...?

Especially since said "advisor" doesn't strike me as technically-minded...not going to apologize for throwing shade at cryptobros. Very common that they don't really understand the tech they preach. ?‍♂️