blundertwink

I agree that this was poorly worded. I think they see complaints and believe "our players just don't like change", because with almost every change they've announced people have complained. But that isn't so much a problem with us (except a few idiots) as a a problem with...almost every change being poorly conceived, and with the general lack of stability in terms of the game's overall direction. They seem really surprised that people don't enjoy their alpha-style of development where they throw changes around with no plan just to "test them out". On a paid game. That's been in dev for 7+ years. They should have left this style of dev behind a long time ago. No more "well, we're not sure...this is just a first iteration..." -- that doesn't work in a paid product at what is apparently late-stage beta. The nature of the product should be much more stable now, but they are constantly changing the core of what DU is. Nobody is mad that the game is changing, we all want the game to change. Are people mad that the poor planning around changes means their scans will become defunct? Sure. Is that anyone's fault but NQ's? Obviously not. It isn't that players are "divided", it's that NQ has created these catch-22 situations by not planning ahead and never getting out of "early alpha" development processes. I think with these videos...they should talk a lot less. Keep it focused. Write a script. Give us the important information quickly, then elaborate more. Don't let your opinions about the player-base leak into the content. It really underscores how NQ doesn't completely understand how professional studios run their development. They expect us to all be cool with this early-alpha "play it by ear" method that isn't conducive to MMOs and certainly not paid subscription MMOs. They just don't seem to understand their own product.

This is one of the disadvantages to these cloud-based services -- you have to depend on both sets of devs, apparently. That means NQ will blame Nvidia for service interruption, who then might blame NQ. I don't mean "blame" in any public sense, just that it will take them a lot of time to figure out who is responsible for the game breaking on GFN, never mind implementing actual fixes. GFN breaks, so NQ asks Nvidia why. Nvidia takes a week (or more) to tell them what they did wrong, then NQ takes another week or more to roll out a patch. There's (for some reason) no real urgency because in NQ's eyes, GFN is just one way to play the game -- they don't treat it as "downtime" when really they should, especially with the sub price increase. $9.99 a month is expensive when it doesn't work for weeks....if NQ is going to offer the game on GFN, they should treat downtime there with the same urgency as general downtime -- or if they can't commit to maintaining playability on GFN, they should stop offering it.

It'd be great to post a short transcript of relevant Q&As. An hour long video is okay...but you can't really blame anyone for not wanting to sit through this. If this is the only medium of communication, make it more to the point...do some editing. I'm sorry but it's not super entertaining or funny, it's meandering. Or keep doing it in this format, but give us a summary in text. Here's a not-so-quick summary, I'm sure others can do it better: They don't want to reset all talents because "that would mean we have to reset talents all the time!" and they feel people should be "locked in"...Which isn't what the player base is saying at all, but okay. New vertex complexity meter -- so more build limits coming down the line, but not here yet. Brake change reverted (already mentioned), but changes will come. Seems like they have some branch management issues. Scans will show old information (will show resources that don't exist anymore). So....all old scans are defunct? No real feedback about mining -- not going to make it more intuitive (idk about minigame) and yeah resources are infinite which we knew. Chicken and egg with T3 ore and DSAT..."we'll get back to you" --> guess they never thought about this somehow lol Some whining about "we can't win with this" regarding scans is annoying to me they can find a solution -- it's called planning ahead instead of this "let's just push it out and see" approach. Take some responsibility for your poor planning -- that's the root cause, not that "players are divided about what to do" in regards to keeping scans or making them all worthless. It's their problem created from their radically changing design and poor plans. They are increasing asteroid spawns in safe zones, but not the spawn time frame. Surface mining on unclaimed tiles is fine (other than sanctuary) Higher tier ore is not "deliberately excluded" from pools, "should be present on outer planets". More rare. Any LUA APIs on mining units? 4 new functions (maybe) to query state/rate/ore/territory pool. Taxes... They need the resource sinks they say, because "resources are now unlimited". I don't think they've actually though about what "unlimited" means, because they are rate-limited. They are unlimited like gold in WoW is "unlimited" --> it's still finite because time is finite, the well just won't tap out. The prices of ores will change of course. They are considering some free "HQ" hexes that won't be taxed and can be used on any planet. That would solve a lot of issues. "We might add it to Demeter, maybe not". Clearly they need this for Demeter. They seem confident that the revenue of mining will be plenty to pay for taxes -- seems they don't expect ore prices to change. We'll see if that's true. Static/Dynamic constructs will become salvageable if parked on tile that changes ownership after "2 weeks", could be changed -- so there's a bit of a waiting period before you can requisition constructs Future plans -- new roadmap in early 2022 Increasing the price of the sub. If you want to pay $6.99/month, you must sub for a year. But they are introducing a 1 month plan at $9.99/month I want to remind NQ that this is a paid game, so players don't treat it the same as they would a typical beta. Nor should they. A lot of reminding us "this is just a first iteration" etc. -- well...throwing it up and waiting to see how it goes isn't a great idea for any paid game. Especially when you're increasing prices. It isn't like this "push and see how it goes" approach is how games are normally designed, especially an MMO! It would maybe be fine for closed alpha, but that's not where we are.

Rendering isn't the core issue with performance, it's generally network. Granted, DU has some uniquely bad rendering problems...but there's no reason why a GPU can't handle rendering 15-20 simple mesh ships (they are simple mesh ships, not voxels) in the otherwise blank canvas of space. Raycasts over large distances are significantly more expensive than over short ones, so yes performance might be better closer and slower. Physics from off-the-shelf engines like Unigen tend to break at large speeds. Everything becomes less precise and relies more on LERPs and guesses in terms of client/server sync. Even understanding what ships are "near" each other is more expensive over large distances. Optimizing resources around smaller areas might be easier based on their auto-scale model -- just speculation based on some of their early posts on how they optimize network for "busy" areas. Their auto-scaling model is kind of irrelevant for combat because it takes too long to spin up resources, anyway...and NQ doesn't want to pay for it. I don't know if closer and slower combat would actually improve performance (that's plausible, but impossible to know without grinding into the details of their implementation), but it is technically reasonable IMO.... Regardless, combat needs more love...I think everyone can agree with that.

100% they will. Their next item on the roadmap is "first time user experience" which will certainly need to deal with clutter on Sanctuary. New players won't enjoy hiking 20 minutes to find an empty tile, especially when the "tutorial" tells you to go back and forth to the market multiple times. I really wonder how player densities on Sanctuary will affect performance, too. This whole patch can very quickly become counterproductive to all their stated goals.

I especially loved how they had a questions thread....complained that people weren't asking enough questions and were making the thread "too busy to review"....never answered any questions....then locked the thread. They've literally spent more time complaining about their own forum's organization than engaging about the update. NQ has definitely established a culture around their company of designing the game on a whim with no long-term plans and doing as little customer interaction as humanly possible. It's a...bold combination for sure.

By "chase the red square" I mean you should be able to see what you're fighting. Combat should be closer and slower. Lock and fire isn't the problem, it's that combat is only lock and fire....with no other depth like you said. I would prefer it being more strategic and not some "twich-based" insane skill-cap PvP. I never implied that is the best model for DU. Combat now has no drama, no engagement, no appeal. That's where it needs to draw inspiration from T.V. and movies, not reality. If combat isn't at least mildly interesting to watch, it probably won't be interesting to play. And like it or not, we live in a streaming world where huge marketing value is driven from streamers -- it's free money NQ is leaving on the table. As for "blindly complaining" -- NQ doesn't read shit, anyway. "Good" feedback with intricate implementation ideas is exactly as useful as vague complaints. Even for a highly engaged studio, that's probably true. The devs don't care about detailed implementation ideas -- they know that when people say something "isn't fun", they mean "not engaging" -- and ultimately, it's a design problem they need to fix. That's the point of feedback. Maybe you don't find random complaints like "it isn't fun" helpful, but for the dev it actually is important feedback to listen to. For every one person with a detailed implementation idea, there's a lot more that have a general sentiment but no clue how to "fix" their design...it really isn't up to any player to judge what feedback is useful, especially for a studio that doesn't really engage with feedback anyway.

What do you mean? I'm advocating for the opposite of realism. I'm well versed on technical limitations having spent years in game dev. Exactly what limits are you talking about? Having interesting combat in any way, shape, or form? Suggesting that NQ needs more engaging combat isn't demanding "hyper realistic visuals" at all...when I say they should borrow a page from TV/movies, I don't mean TV/movie level graphics. I mean they should think about combat in terms of creating drama and engagement instead of realism. "Chase the red square" is very much the opposite of that philosophy.

It gets into a gray area -- if they promise to physically ship you a product, that's a very explicit reward. They have to fulfill it in some way. However, stretch goals are not officially a part of the KS product or project per their terms/descriptions. Beyond stretch goals, their obligation is to "complete the project", not necessarily to "complete the project exactly as described". Features aren't actually rewards, they are part of the product description or stretch goal -- so their obligation is different and a lot more vague. Realistically, KS does not get involved in disputes or refunds, so there's very little recourse even if you think they "failed to deliver rewards". You'd pretty much have to actually sue NQ. TLDR: only back a KS project if you really believe in the project to the point where you don't expect much of anything in return, because the law isn't really on your side in terms of getting that money back if they fail to meet your expectations.

That was kind of my point -- the movies do it the way they do for a damn good reason, to create drama and engagement. Realism isn't the goal in DU, either -- there's nothing realistic about the game, anyway -- from the lore to the mechanics. Besides, realism is never the goal of any game. DU should take a page from movies and television in wanting battles to be dramatic and engaging, not realistic. They should bend the rules of physics to create drama and engagement, that's their job as game makers. Realism can be boring and flat -- "chase the red square" is really not exciting to me or anyone watching. Especially with full open world PvP, this concept this needs to be much more evolved, engaging, and balanced to work. I've played a lot of space games...and frankly, combat in DU ranks among the worst implementations in terms of engagement, skill, lag, and balance.

Especially for new players, I wonder what they are supposed to do other than vacuum rocks... Setting up a base on Sanctuary? Enjoy trekking even further since it's now the only real "safe zone" and everyone will move their shit there. No point in going to Alioth, you can't afford the taxes as a fresh player and the "exploration" part of the game is gone now that there's no ore to mine. No point running missions until you can get a proper ship. No way to PvP or mine asteroids without a space ship either, and as a new player you aren't going to win any PvP encounter in this game's poorly conceived idea of "open world" PvP (inherently asymmetrical conflict). All because they decided to bury ore absurdly deep and turn their game into a mole sim. They didn't have to do that. Now instead of "mole sim" it becomes a "lube up your miners and wait" sim. Fortunately, we'll be able to see how all this works out soon, there's little chance they delay the update for more tweaks. They've never adapted to player criticism before and I have no reason to believe they will now, either.

TV shows have a good understanding of the push and pull between realism and engagement when it comes to space combat. Star Trek is a great example of "high sci-fi" with shields and advanced tech -- yeah, if it were "realistic" you'd never get close enough to really see enemy ships, but they have always understood that they are creating a work of entertainment first. The Expanse is another good example of lower-tech combat that feels more realistic and less futuristic, but doesn't kill drama in the name of realism. DU definitely needs to take a page or two from TV on how to represent combat -- 'chase the red square' isn't very dramatic or engaging. It's the age of streaming, it matters if combat is super boring, especially for an MMO.

There is literally no PvE right now -- there's no "environment" to be against....so there's no point in a PvE server, because there would be no conflict. Games without conflict are not really games, they are building tools or sandboxes. That said, there's not much point to a PvP server, either -- PvP is only barely implemented and is still so rough, clunky, and poorly balanced no serious PvP gamer will find the appeal, here. This is one of the few games where even watching PvP is so insanely boring there's no point streaming. What they really need is to implement either PvP or PvE in a complete, engaging, and clean way.

The trajectory so far again emphasizes NQ's general culture of hubris and an overwhelming lack of humility. Here (yet again) we have a lot of players telling them why this isn't going to work well...that the idea is right, but the implementation is very wrong. IMO, this will go live pretty close to "as-is" because NQ doesn't believe players have any useful feedback. The last PTS update underscores that idea -- very few substantial tweaks around the balance of new features. We've seen this path before with 0.23. Back then, they released a statement defending their changes and talking about how players just don't understand how to play their game. How their opinions were simply wrong. NQ struggles with tech. They struggle with customer service. They certainly struggle with design...but they also struggle with humility and being open-minded enough to see the flaws in their bizarre "play it by ear" design style. They promised that they would improve around communication, but they didn't put any real effort into it. They just don't believe feedback is important. A lot of pride for a game that's spent over 7 years in the alpha stage...and still struggles with really fundamental issues that make the game look like it is still early in development. The new CEO needs to make some real changes. Frankly, they need to fire some people with too much hubris and not enough talent and shift more resources to design and development -- whatever development path they are on, it hasn't been working for a long time.

I think it's great that NQ finally has a CEO with gaming experience...after over 7 years. Granted, I don't understand why it took them so long. I think it shows a step in the right direction and that they are going to stick with this product until it can get at least to early access release.

Games die before going live all the time....it's extremely common. And it's been in development for 7+ years now, it isn't like this is some brand new thing that just hit beta and is still early in the dev process.

Every successful sub-based MMO has only one interest when it comes to inactive players: get them to resubscribe. Why do you think Netflix makes it so easy for you to pause or cancel? They know that at some point you'll come crawling back and don't want to piss you off in the meantime. I get that they need a way to reclaim tiles to save money....but they are severely limiting the appeal of resubscribing. Even if their churn rate were low, that would be a problem long-term. Without AvA or territory war, opening these dead tiles to first-come salvage is a weird idea -- make a way for the owner to reclaim (most) of the mats and delete it, don't just throw it into the wind and shrug at the concept of resubs. Majorly counterproductive for NQ's bottom line.

It's a horse beaten until its glue, then glued back into a horse and beaten to death again.

Rule number 1 of the DU forum: every thread that exceeds 4 pages eventually becomes a discussion about the merits of PvP. It's been that way for years and years. ?‍♂️ Does anyone think NQ will actually answer questions here...? They spent more time scolding us for polluting this thread with "non-questions" than they have engaging. It's just bad PR to claim that this thread being too busy is the reason they can't "process our feedback" and reply. NQ has a long history of poor communication, which isn't the worst issue tbh, but trying to deflect it onto players is a weird choice. It's a familiar pattern for them, they had a similar reaction to backlash against 0.23 -- they probably think "these players can't be pleased, they just whine about every change no matter how awesome (we think it is)". Good luck getting this monster to release!

Really an important point. Building factories was fun. They could have balanced the mechanic without making the engaging aspects so tedious, but they never listened to their players telling them "hey, this is fun, please don't nerf this entirely". Instead of adding depth to create balance, they removed depth. Personally, I also liked the exploration required to seek out nodes -- even though I wasn't a fan of the mining mechanic itself (they didn't have to bury ore so deep...no one forced them to do that). It wasn't the best sense of adventure and discovery, but it gave me something to use my ship for...since I find combat in DU really dull, clunky, and poorly balanced. If I want a real PvP experience I play a competitive PvP game built by people with a much better sense of game design. DU isn't that, not yet. With Demeter, my ship is a train to move shit to and from a market. Is there any real need to leave my tile? To mine asteroids and that's pretty much it? Also, trickle down economics isn't really a thing. Someone can pull billions of quanta out of the game and most of it will sit in their wallets forever or get dumped into schematics. It doesn't always circulate. So...if NQ balances the game for the wealthy, established players it has now, it creates a feedback loop where it becomes harder and harder for new players to get established...that old wealth doesn't go anywhere, it rots in wallets and evaporates as accounts unsub or through taxes.

Ah, DU, the game that advertised that you could "build anything" and "be anyone". Can't build big factories, it takes a ton of schematics -- not worth the grind Can't build factory ships, because... Can't build cities, because money (even though they talked about cities and claimed their tech was "cutting edge") Can't have massive battles -- if you try too often, they'll probably implement time dilation lol (because this is the nature of single shard, NQ wasn't being 'innovative', they just didn't understand the tech or its limits) Can't own a hex without paying a government that has no law or lore or NPCs Can't even design a ship without them changing how elements work this late into a supposed "beta" -- doesn't bother me that much, but they've had 7+ years, people, they could have figured out how brakes work by now. Can't do territory war, who knows when that'll be a thing Can't do AvA, maybe ever, who knows To be fair, DU still has some of the best building tools -- among my favorite things is simply flying around and seeing what other people have made. Even that might start to vanish as taxes kick in. NQ still has time to balance it, but no one knows if they will because they never bother to communicate.

Satisfactory is great. IDC if it's off topic. It really does a great job sucking you in and showing what factory automation gameplay can be. Definitely worth the price. it's a bit of an understatement to say Satisfactory is a "better implemented" factory automation concept...I'd say it is like night and day, but even that is too similar. It's like night and an apple? I get what you mean, I don't think NQ would cry at all about losing all their current customers to be honest....but it isn't great when their most loyal and financially invested alpha backers etc. evaporate over the years. If you can't convince them to stick around I don't have high hopes for general wider release.

This will not help with performance as much as they believe because it will herd a lot of players onto Sanctuary and keep them there indefinitely. Higher player density in one area will increase cost and reduce performance -- especially for new players. It will make new players travel further for a claim rather than making more tiles actually available, and the rest of the worlds will feel ghostly and pointless. Why bother exploring these graphically meh worlds post Demeter...? There's nothing you can do -- fewer constructs to scope out (although we still don't know what will happen to constructs when taxes aren't paid?!), no cities ever, no nodes to find...nothing to find in general. It will be a game of flying from A to B with no sense of adventure at all except a hideously boring and poorly balanced combat system that most players avoid. They made a really bizarre combination of choices with Demeter that will only make it harder for new players, will not really improve performance thanks to Sanctuary clutter, will eliminate the desire to resubscribe, and will leave players with even less to do (which is saying something). From a game design perspective, there's no logic here....Unless the plan is to add micro-transactions so you can pay real world money for a tax-free hex, which....have fun with that, NQ.

That's exactly what I'm saying -- most people don't actually disagree with the change, they disagree with the implementation. This is a sub-based product and players are articulating very clearly that they will stop paying. Churn rate is the ultimate foe of every sub-based business model. You don't have to keep customers 'happy', but you do need to keep them subbed. You don't have to treat customers as kings, but you do have to listen when they are complaining and understand if it is an "us" problem or a "them" problem. They have already burned a lot of bridges with their most loyal players and alpha backers, it seems like they just don't care to me.

@NQ-Pann I'm curious why there hasn't been any interaction by NQ regarding all of the seemingly negative feedback around this update. Why ask for questions or feedback at all? NQ said some time ago that they would try to improve when it comes to customer communication...it doesn't feel like that effort has really materialized at all. Like I actually agree with the idea behind most of these changes, but the implementation seems way off. That's exactly where player feedback should be helping NQ but there's never any two-way communication so we have no clue.