blundertwink
-
Posts
917 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by blundertwink
-
-
19 hours ago, Grizzly45 said:
After spending a lot of days on the production of the plant and now abandon the ore? This is tantamount to leaving the game.
But NQ isn't really working on DU anymore, so....you literally care more about seeing the game improve than they do. It isn't going to change, certainly not anytime soon.
We're talking about a game that has had fewer and fewer DAUs since release -- a steady, linear decline driven by churn that's never shown even a hint of reversing or even plateuing.
NQ has been clear that their focus is on a new gaming project, not DU.
Whatever ideas you have about improving the game are not going to be listened to...and even if they are, whatever skeleton crew is still working on DU isn't going to be in a hurry to patch the game because it has no commercial future at all.
My suggestion is to not post ideas here, because this idea that NQ is trying to make this game work long-term isn't based on reality and fact. All evidence points to the idea that they've given up on DU and are focused on new projects.
-
19 hours ago, BlindingBright said:
Going to unreal, if they're using Nanite... can least drop down to a single mesh/vector file, without multiple LOD meshes needed. NQ never really made good on just storing vector data of constructs, if they had been able to do that their data and server performance would arguably be muuuuuch better.
Unfortunately, I doubt they'll use Nanite for a number of reasons.
First, it doesn't support any sort of mesh deformation -- even skeletal animation -- no matter static or dynamic. That makes it harder for a voxel-style game, but maybe they can work around it.
Second, it doesn't support translucent materials (yet); that's harder to work around with a UGC-oriented game.
Third, it doesn't scale as well when dealing with large quantities of distinct meshes (which is likely in a voxel game) because of how it has to optimize meshes on the GPU.
I'm hardly an expert on the ins and outs of Nanite, but the idea behind it isn't new and like most every tech, it has trade-offs and caveats. Regardless, moving to Unreal definitely emphasizes that Unigen2 wasn't the right choice, haha!
The issue I have is that NQ doesn't seem to understand what "content" actually means. They think UGC in DU is all the ships and buildings players have made, but that's not really content...
The content in DU is the sandbox itself -- that's the engagement point and always has been. The constructs people make are merely assets, the actual content is the creative process in making those things. NQ still doesn't seem to get this...and with how obsessed their leadership (CEO and investors) are with web3/UGC concepts, I'm doubtful they've learned their lessons with DU.
Like many cryptobro types, they tend to lean into things even harder in the face of failure: "oh, the issue with DU is that it doesn't have enough UGC"! So they believe empowering players with more tools to build content for them is still the right approach. A literal version of Anarchy Online I guess?
No one wants to turn the Google Play store into an MMO, but that's basically what the metaverse imagines.
A mess of content you pay for piecemeal (they are hiring a FTP monetization expert this time around) with no real standards -- and enjoy doing the work to search out good content on your own time and expense.
Yeah, I wonder why these metaverse concepts fail...? 🤔
-
On 4/3/2023 at 3:24 PM, CptLoRes said:
Appearances is everything if your main plan for the future is to be sold to some large corp. or become the next big NFT/web3 something..
IMO, the ship has sailed on NQ finding a buyer. If they could have found such a buyer, they'd have sold by now.
The first step in any due diligence would be to ask about revenue. Then it becomes very clear that DU doesn't exist as a product.
I've been through a few acquisitions working in the startup world -- IMO, it's the exception that these startups are acquired purely for tech. Tech on its own means very little to business people. They don't know its minutia and they don't care. They care that it can be monetized. That it works.
Yeah, some companies do get acquired purely for tech, but that isn't the norm. Even big companies work like this -- if they're interested in the tech, they will wait until there's an actual customer base before an acquisition. You can review Google's acquisitions and see this easily -- their acquisitions are mostly for products, not merely tech.
Otherwise, "good tech" is equivalent to a "good idea". It's been said that great ideas are worth pennies; great ideas with a real implementation are a different story.
The way to prove that tech works is by creating a product. NQ hasn't done that yet.
To put it another way...if you were a big company interested in acquiring NQ's tech or trademarks, why would you do it now...? Just wait until they are desperate and buy it for pennies because due diligence has revealed that they have no revenue.
-
8 minutes ago, BlindingBright said:
What's the point in playing an MMO with rampant exploits, small community, and a dev team that has moved onto other things?
The only point to playing is to throw money at NQ so they can spend it elsewhere 🤷♂️ Not exactly the most honest way to run a studio, but I guess that's how they approach PR in general.
As for their other project, here's what their CEO posted a few hours ago:
NQ's higher ups don't view DU the same as players.
To them, it's still a stroke of genius and all about "breaking boundaries" and innovation. This is how web3/crypto people think, though -- they don't care about use case or implementation or game design or anything else that exists in the real world. These sorts can't distinguish between "innovative" and "good" -- novelty isn't always intelligent.
This general lack of humility is why NQ's next venture will turn out no different than their previous one. They still don't understand why game design matters more than tech or innovation...and it's shocking to me that they'd actually work on another game with this mindset, having learned nothing from the last 8 years of failure.
If all you can see is how great you are, you'll never learn from past mistakes -- and NQ has shown over and over that they don't learn from past mistakes.
-
2 hours ago, Zeddrick said:
It makes me wonder what decisions they have made about the current game if they won't put in the effort to take that beacon back? It's a far cry from the NQ in the first month of release swinging the ban hammer for exploits ....
I think it's pretty clear that they decided to stop major development of DU and no longer care what decisions are made about it one way or the other...
This is an MMO with a DAU count likely in the hundreds (optimistically) after 6+ months of release...there is no practical business reason to keep developing DU, and they've basically said as much through job postings and confirming that they are working on another game project.
If you were running an MMO that was successful (or that you believed would be successful one day), you wouldn't spend your very limited runway on another project.
I don't know why people expect that NQ is actually working on DU in any meaningful way -- the reality that they are working on other projects makes DU's fate rather clear to me...considering they lack the resources to make even this game, there's no feasible way they can be continuing serious dev of DU alongside whatever other project is in the works.
Anything said otherwise is, IMO, just stringing people along for limited sub revenue.
-
On 4/1/2023 at 12:01 PM, CptLoRes said:
I imagine it would be very hard to continue to pretend to be community driven anything, if they did that.
It wouldn't be a shock to me if the forums go offline because this is a paid/hosted service via Invision.
As far as I can tell, it's a minimum of ~$89/month (annually).
It is hardly a big cost, but if NQ is going to spin these forums down, they'll likely wait until the end of the yearly billing term (assuming they are paying annually).
As for "appearances"...who cares...? It isn't like they have any delusion that DU will be a success; if they did, they'd be investing resources in DU instead of their new game project, which they are actively hiring for.
Frankly...I can't see any justification for keeping these forums open as a business. It is mostly just customer complaints (rightly so) and gives them no value at all. It isn't like they have ever used these forums to engage with their customers, collect feedback, or cultivate good PR.
They could have saved themselves some money and spun these down years ago since they only have an interest in engaging via Discord...why should they keep these forums open...?
-
On 3/27/2023 at 2:14 PM, CptLoRes said:
Speaking of Metaverse/Web3/NFT/whatever and NQ, watch this video (long one, but worth it) and replace Decentraland with Novaquark.
I've spoken with some of the Decentraland people because some splintered off to form a scammy "pay to win" MMO which I've linked to before. This interview was at the request of one of their C-suite execs who told me way more dirt than he should have (including that they made more in their initial NFT sales than NQ has ever raised). Very glad I didn't pursue the job.
This video mentions faulty assumptions about how these are adults trying to 'revolutionize the concept of ownership' -- and that is funny to me, because there's no way in hell that they actually care about anything other than making money.
Any "ideology" that these clowns pretend to have is utter crap.
The people that are true "believers" in this NFT/crypto BS are often the ones being exploited -- because the people that made Decentraland never believed in anything other than personal enrichment....which is perhaps obvious to people that understand ponzi schemes.
Maybe you'll never get all your DU backer rewards, but at least you didn't sink thousands into a crappy MMO's NFTs believing they'd increase in value, lol.
Ah, the "metaverse" -- redefining the benchmark for what "scam" means in gaming. Great time to be alive.
-
1 hour ago, BlindingBright said:
So I guess I should be one of them trolls that gaslights the community
Even those trolls are mostly gone by now...they once insisted that "Steam means nothing" and that the game was actually growing without any real explanation.
Steam is now under 100 DAUs and there hasn't been a post on the reddit sub in weeks -- typically it's single digit numbers online there anymore.
If there are still die-hard fans that insist that the game is growing, they are few.
Yet some will still talk about how things will change "when Territory War comes" like someone waiting for Godot, even as NQ has said very clearly "hey, we're actually working on another game".
It's a weird brand of loyalty to me; I don't judge people that like this game in its current form and want it to keep going, but when they become borderline hostile at facing fact, it does become hilarious.
-
33 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:
When anyone can generate a Let's Encrypt certificate and put any kind of site behind it, what security does the certificate actually add?
It provides actual security by encrypting requests and replies.
Without it, the communication between your browser and a server is sent in plain-text. A third party could easily intercept data being sent between client and server, and that can be very bad news.
There's a reason Google sounds so many alarms and doesn't want to auto-fill your credit card on a non-https site! As evil as they are, they aren't always wrong.
So SSL/TLS does provide "actual" security. The web is far safer with every site being forced to use it (although not really "forced" since you can ignore Chrome's warnings).
Even if you're feeding data to a scammer behind an HTTPs site, it's better that some third party isn't also intercepting and using that data. SSL/TLS is about the protocol, not the site or the content or the organization. No one clicks on that lock icon to verify the organization; that's one facet of security but not the most important one.
That anyone can use it doesn't make it inherently "not useful" -- but again, in this case it's about protocol and not content.
I think I took this thread wildly off topic to talk about security in general, so I do apologize to the OP!
TLDR is that cybersecurity is complicated and it's better to be paranoid and never underestimate malicious actors.
-
2 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:
It's not just code signing. It is the sum of all those bits like signing, SSL, TPM, DRM etc. etc. that adds up costing time and money and adding lots of complexity and points of failure.
And I am not saying I have a better solution, but it is strange that all those solutions somehow always ends up costing money and causing some kind of vendor type lock-in/walled garden scenario. Aka the security cartel..
Code signing isn't an example of this, though....it's absurdly cheap and there's a billion different vendors. It isn't that hard to swap vendors.
Neither is TLS/SSL (which is also free and extremely easy nowadays via services like LetsEncrypt).
At least in my opinion, there are far greater examples of "walled gardens" (like AWS) that are far more complex, more vendor locked, and more problematic for consumers overall.
These security concepts are very, very, very minor inconvenience to developers and a minuscule cost of doing business compared to any other facet of development like staff, hardware, or platforms.
Especially concepts like TLS/SSL -- it takes devs 10 minutes or less to install a free LE cert (assuming they even need to do this themselves, which is hardly typical) but it does give a lot of benefit to end users.
There's a reason it's standard practice and there's no reason any site without SSL should be trusted in 2023 considering how damn easy it is to install relative to the benefit! Either they are too lazy to care, or too incompetent to be trusted.
Ultimately, a world without code signing or TLS/SSL would be a less secure place.
I'm not saying there's no such thing as scammy anti-virus BS or that every security feature is valid, but IMO this isn't an example of big tech walled gardens or other BS like that...these are just common sense standard security practices that are a tiny, tiny, tiny effort/cost, especially compared to many other more scammy concepts in tech.
-
5 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:
So in short, yet another way that money exchange hands with the security cartel to ensure that "there is no accident" with your software.
Eh? How is code signing controversial...?
It's absurdly simple and cheap -- something any developer that's written desktop software in the last decade and a half would be very familiar with.
Generally, there's no reason to trust any unsigned executable; the only reason to trust unsigned software is if you've written it yourself or know the person that has.
If you write commercial desktop software, it should be signed. The cost is immaterial.
I've written commercial software that was signed and still flagged by VirusTotal et. al, so it doesn't mean anything other than that there's some shred of accountability between the entity publishing the software the consumer since it's "signed" by the creator and therefore not merely some anonymous code.
Hardly foolproof, but there's a good reason why Microsoft et al. check for this.
From a security perspective as someone that has worked in software engineering for a very long time....this idea that you should do your own research case-by-case is not convincing to me. Don't play 'security researcher' unless you're trained and experienced in that field. The risk is far higher than any reward.
Be paranoid -- there's very rarely any reason to trust unsigned software in general (if that's even what this flag comes from) and if Windows tells you something is a virus, that's something the developer needs to fix, not something you should decide to trust or not trust on your own.
People that think they are very security-savvy can easily be victims especially when they believe it's easy to figure out what is or isn't malicious on your own. Which...don't get me wrong, very often it is easy....but it's also very unwise to underestimate malware.
-
On 3/18/2023 at 9:12 PM, Tandin said:
Did this ever get resolved? I'm getting the error in my VM (Arch/libvirt/qemu) after coming back to the game after a couple months.
The last post about it was about a month ago here:
Their patch on 3/14 mentions it:
QuoteWe are aware of and still investigating ongoing issues with EasyAntiCheat, causing some players to get an error popup when switching between accounts. This can mostly be avoided by entirely closing down the client between login attempts.
But there's no notes about it being a known issue in the 3/20 patch (1.3.5). So hey, maybe they fixed it Monday and you'll have better luck...lol
Don't hold your breath about them caring about your use case in general -- there's so few players, I don't think they much care if EAC causes issues with edge-case setups as it's still only ~1.2% of gamers that use Linux overall (per Steam's hardware survey)
Development in general is slower than its ever been with NQ focusing on other game projects, so I wouldn't expect much in terms of a fix.
-
I couldn't find any reference via a Google Image search.
The reddit sub hasn't even had a new post in 11 days...nor has DU's official twitter.
Goes to show how "alive" this game is, lol...I guess it isn't a shock considering they've now dipped below even 100 DAUs on Steam. Games like this that look like they were thrown together in a day have better stats (higher all-time peak and more DAUs lol).
Regardless, aliens are (IMO) a dumb addition to the game's already childish lore...if you can even call it that. I'd assert that DU doesn't really have any lore -- there's no society, no culture, no politics, no conflict, no story of any kind.
People just show up on this random bland planet and immediately descend into a libertarian hell...but wait, there's also aliens...? Okay...?
-
6 hours ago, le_souriceau said:
Well, its what some people seen in one way or another for years (with more evidence or less, relying on gut feeling, experience with game industry), some were better in formulating it, then others. All this discussions, about economy, wipes, population. At core it was about is NQ to be believed or not (obviously - not).
I understand that perspective 100% -- and can't really defend the integrity of the company, overall.
That said...the definition of "scammy" has sadly evolved in even the last few years.
For all their faults, NQ spent 8 years trying to make this game. It was absurdly ambitious, poorly funded from the start (relative to the genre), but they did invest time in an effort to make a game.
I think that effort is still worth some level of respect, especially for the devs that invested so much time for relatively little reward (as game devs are notoriously underpaid).
There are "play to earn" MMOs (like this one) that really epitomize what "scam" means in the modern game industry.
NQ is far from perfect and hardly the most honest company or a company with great PR / communication skills...but I don't think it's a full on "scam" compared to many of the seedier players in this industry today. They could have spent a ton less effort to make a lot more money if they really wanted to be like that.
Not saying I trust NQ or view them as a company with a lot of honesty, but I'd learn toward "they tried but didn't have the experience" versus "this was all a scam from the start".
Of course...for all I know, NQ's next project is some sort of similar web3 / NFT / play to earn BS -- NQ's leadership hasn't been shy about embracing these silly concepts...so I guess we'll see...?
-
Yet NQ is still claiming that their tech is absolutely groundbreaking and cutting edge. This is from the CEO's public post just today:
QuoteIn 2020… Novaquark released a video that shows all the potential of the Dual Universe technology
This was before Covid, before the Metaverse Frenzy, before ChatGPT… but still spot on[...]QuoteI believe that with Dual Universe we are only scratching the surface of the potential of the tech
But since slow and steady wins the race, let’s see where this leads us
Once you have a strong tech stack, the question is about multiple angles to leverage its power
As we keep pushing usages of the tech in all directions, can’t wait to see what we are coming up with!There's a fine line between being proud of the tech they made (which is fair for such a small studio) and arrogance about shit that's never worked at scale...
This idea that NQ was so advanced back in 2020 and so "ahead of the game" is so weird to me...almost as weird as using the term "metaverse frenzy" as if it became some explosively popular concept.
This is how web3 / blockchain people often think, though...they care only about the idea, not the implementation or use case...and certainly not scale.
I understand that NQ is doing what they think is best to survive, but I am really doubtful that they've learned any humility from their experience with DU as they continue to insist their tech stack is actually amazing despite legendarily poor performance, an ocean of bugs, and no proven ability to scale.
-
14 hours ago, VarietyMMOs said:
Thanks for saying the silent part out loud. Now players can finally address the obvious issue of most of the devs working on other projects and finally move on from a game that's barely been on life support since day 1 of launch. We appreciate the confirmation.
I wish NQ had been more up front about this, although to be fair it was never really hidden...I've been talking about this for a long time now and NQ's CEO had been very, very clear that their focus was on other projects in their public posts -- for well over a year.
But many people continue (even now) to insist that DU is healthy and growing (despite data from multiple sources and NQ's own statements). They're sitting around waiting for promised features as NQ works on their other game.
People are still joining the game and wasting their money to try a game that the devs have already effectively given up on...I wouldn't go as far to say it's "scammy" but it sure isn't honest either.
Of course they might say "oh we haven't given up, we have all these changes planned"....but it's absurd to suggest a company of NQ's side can actually juggle game projects and that they'd give equal weight to a commercial failure of a product even if they could.
-
13 hours ago, Zeddrick said:
How hard can that be?
Honestly...small things like this are hard when the dev team was already small relative to the genre....but now the team is even smaller as NQ has been focused on its other game project for a while.
So...even tiny but impactful UX changes are not going to materialize anytime soon.
The OP should expect to come back to essentially the same game in a month or in however many weeks.
No company of NQ's size can realistically juggle multiple game projects -- DU's development is far closer to its end than its beginning...so don't hold your breath on changes in general, never mind for annoying issues like this.
-
38 minutes ago, MrTenneal said:
but with only 42 peak players per steam, no telling what the direct purchase is, they may want to work on fixing this...
NQ has been very clear that DU isn't their primary project anymore.
They know the stats, they know the challenges, they know it makes zero sense to keep developing DU as their main priority because the game doesn't work as a commercial product and never will.
NQ is focused on their next project. That's where they are hiring people, that's where the CEO has been focused ever since coming onboard.
DU has been dead for a long time now because NQ has focused their resources elsewhere...and has been doing so for a while.
People still don't want to believe this, insisting that a sub-based game with no players can magically keep going even with so few resources, even fewer players, and only tiny, insignificant updates since release.
So...to your point, NQ isn't going to fix anything and knows very well that the game isn't popular and never will be...hence their resources being focused elsewhere.
-
6 hours ago, DemonAn9el said:
This is quite a concerning post, would like to hear more details on this......Will this "other project" end up replacing DU? Are we all just wasting our time playing this current game you have?
To look at it another way, why would NQ spend most of their resources developing a game that's failed to scale, can't support that scale technically even if it was popular, and is locked into a naive subscription monetization model because of its core design...?
For all the many criticisms I've given, it would be kind of dumb for NQ to keep piling money into a project that has no realistic chance of success.
I can't say I'm optimistic for whatever project they're working on, but can't fault NQ for trying to pivot. DU has been dead in terms of dev for a while now, this isn't anything new that they are spending most their resources elsewhere.
I don't know why people are surprised when they have said they are working on other projects since before release...
-
I apologize for making the false assumption and greatly appreciate the clarity...in the context of the original posting, it does heavily imply this is for DU.
2 hours ago, le_souriceau said:This tho creates new assumptions, about how NQ resources used between DU and this "new project". Major point of concern.
Sure, but we've known that they have been working on new projects for a long time...
There's a lot I've actually liked about DU despite [too] many criticisms, and I appreciate the honesty about working on a new project.
It's actually kind of silly to expect NQ to spend many resources on DU at this point.
The game didn't scale, it can't scale, it won't scale. It was always a moonshot; most MMOs receive 10x NQ's funding (or more) to deliver an infinitely more simple concept!
I do hope they try some creative changes with the game with whatever resources they have left on the project, but let's not pretend that it's possible for a studio of NQ's size to juggle multiple games at scale. The game is what it is and it's great if you enjoy it in its current form, but don't expect a lot of updates in the months or years to come.
-
In my opinion, DU was broken since its inception.
The way to "fix"it would have been to have a professional, well-considered design authored by someone with even a single day of experience in the industry.
"Why did such a promising concept fail...?" Because it was a bad concept cooked up by someone with no experience in the field that had no clue how to create a good design, how to match that with engineering reality, or even the basics of how this genre works as a business.
DU's failings (and it's utterly disconnected with reality to suggest that DU isn't failing or that they "just need more time") come from a poor design, a poor concept, and poor leadership early on.
DU's current and past leadership are obsessed with the idea of UGC, user generated content -- they truly believe that games of the future will not ever "make content" and that's the player's job. They view DU as a "platform for content", not as a game.
This perspective comes from a complete lack of experience or understanding of game design. They somehow don't realize that there's a massive difference between "assets" and "content" and this fundamental misunderstanding of what a video game even is means that NQ was never going to work as a game studio.
They want to be the metaverse company...they keep insisting their vision of UGC as a platform is the future, but they don't even want to understand game design as a concept.
DU and NQ failed because the company was always led by crypto-bro web3 enthusiasts -- and these types don't care about understanding technology or even knowing what a "use case" is.
They have a vision of the future and believe anyone that disagrees is braindead "luddite" that can't see the future as they do.
Yes, JC is 100% in this crypto-bro boat...just look at his current employer.
This idea that DU can "follow the same route as NMS" is so tired and boring and misunderstands completely this industry and how it works.
An example of one game having a comeback in very specific circumstances is not at all relevant to DU. There's no overlap in relevant circumstances between NMS and DU at all -- from the wildly different context of being a sub-based MMO to the fact that DU never had even a shred of initial popularity to the reality around their woefully incomplete design.
Far, far, far more examples of games more similar to DU failing than staging some magic comeback after years of mysteriously-funded dev (yes you can see funding rounds and no NQ hasn't raised capital for years).
-
18 hours ago, Zeddrick said:
Games which go F2P need a huge upfront investment (loss making) to create a large player base to sell to.
Yes...there's no way to slice the math where NQ makes a profit without scale. Someone at NQ must have suggested that going FTP will 'bring in a lot more people' and that might be true...but no MMO can exist without scale long-term and spending time to implement FTP means the game will not improve. As you've pointed out, the sort of changes needed for FTP might bring the opposite...
Best of luck to the poor soul that takes this job.
-
Nope, DU is priced the same as AAA subscription games!
Only it doesn't have an initial purchase price, so their ability to compete in marketing was never going to be there (even if their conversion and churn rate was competitive).
Going FTP or closing the game was always the choice NQ would face because subscriptions can't work for products like Dual Universe.
Elementary math has shown this over and over...math people have done since well before release.
People laughed at the idea that DU could maintain even 10,000 subs...and even with that scale, the subscription would need to be far more expensive to sustain NQ and combat churn.
So...abandoning this absurd subscription model was inevitable and obvious to almost everyone except NQ.
It's really puzzling that any indie/niche subscription MMO would launch without understanding that there's a 95%+ chance that they will have to go FTP...but then again, NQ was founded by someone that hadn't worked a single day in the industry...so of course they didn't understand how the industry works.
-
Fair, but you're assuming that NQ's goal is retaining players and I'm not convinced that's the case.
It's almost certain that DU is adding IAPs and likely going FTP. Getting EAC implemented makes sense for their long-term goals. It isn't about protecting players from cheaters, it's about protecting digital currency and IAPs long-term.
So what if a few players churn as they debug the integration...? It isn't like their subscription base today is at all material. It isn't like users won't continue to churn month-after-month, regardless of EAC.
They will gladly sacrifice a few subs to move this game to a new monetization model...because they don't really have a choice.
I don't think they view EAC as an optional thing, but as a prerequisite to implementing IAP...which they are certainly doing.
So IMO, they won't soften their stance or remove EAC until it's debugged. They are using paying customers as beta testers...in this case, to test features they'll need as they pivot to a new monetization model.
It sucks, but there's really no going back -- subscriptions will never work for DU, and going FTP with IAPs is their last option...so they'll break a few eggs to cook up that crappy omelette and aren't shy about testing things on the live service in the meantime.
Tool for collecting ore from the surface
in General Discussions
Posted
What "heavily trafficked forum" are you talking about? The reddit is even more dead than this forum, as are all other social media accounts.
The only other place is Discord, which is not exactly glowing in positivity for the game, either...and far from what I'd call "heavily trafficked".
Every shred of evidence suggests that NQ is focused on a new game project -- and every available data suggests that DU's player count is only shrinking (not that it was ever enough to be sustainable, even right after launch).
The reality is that NQ isn't looking anywhere for suggestions because they are only working on it with a skeleton crew of devs (if that). There's no evidence whatsoever that this game is or will ever become sustainable and that is reflected in the low engagement across all channels, not just a few bitter people.
Hell, have they even announced 1.4 or its rough release date? Tiny updates every 2 months is not a sign that the devs are hard at work on this project as their main focus, and that means they aren't looking for ideas anywhere.