blundertwink

For a long while i was thinking that yes, NQ can bring this back.
 
For me, 0.24 was a turning point where that last bit of hope faded. It shows that no, they can't fix the game's fundamental problems.
 
The tech is an absolute mess -- even if the game's design was fleshed-out, the tech is a nightmare:
It's riddled with bugs that never get fixed (or get fixed then regress in a future version) Performance is shoddy at best and hasn't been proven to scale even with modest crowds. A million players? Please, they can't handle 10% of that without massive lag and pending ops.  Devs have proven over the last 7 months that they can't make changes -- since closed beta started, what's changed? Schematics to nerf industry, jetpack tweaks, purchased 3rd-party texture packs? Barely making a dent in the laundry list of long-standing bugs? Even if they did drop the mission system in 0.24, this simply isn't enough to justify all that dev time.  They've already been developing for 6 years...and are still far away from being feature-complete. 6-7 years is a long time to stay in alpha.  
This is hardly "early stage" of beta, it's longer than most games spend in development...to not even have a feature-complete beta. With how many bugs they've collected in the last 6 years? Even if they can get to "beta" state, it'll be another 6-7 months of bug fixes and polish before it is actually release-ready. 

It all adds up to one thing to me: they physically can't develop the game in a pace that makes any sort of commercial sense. 
 
Dev never gets faster as the project gets older and bigger...so it isn't like pace is going to magically improve. 
 
Then...you take a step back and look at factors other than raw technical development:
the fact that their leadership has zero experience in game dev  the fact that they make short-sighted design choices (probably because of the above point) the fact that they never had a complete design to begin with and are still "winging it" with core pillars of the game the high staff turnover and low player population the poor/no communication with players -- building zero goodwill with beta testers -- and even having this reputation among their own employees (that they don't listen) nothing about DU today adds up to "this game is going to turn around"
 
Yes, the premise still has potential, but not the game.
 
There's simply too much broken to me and no sign that NQ is capable of fixing it or humble enough to recognize their faults and make changes accordingly. 

Some clarification regarding the script:
We first thought it was some "for profit" project, like that autopilot that is being sold for 10mil a pop and we thought we got a source of it. Pirates know about Rum and yarrrr not that much about AR.
 
I have talked to Ellas and it seems this is an "open source" and free project that is going to be released to the community so it's "for the greater good" of everyone.
 
We have a rule in Anarchy that everyone decides on his own what to do with the loot he got.
After communicating this information(that script is free for all when finished) to my Anarchy folks we decided to give the script back to the owner.
 
Due to the script being kinda unique (it contains some special characters or something so you can't just copy/paste it) we are currently figuring out how we can give it back.
 

i love the discussion about how devs would "never" code without backups or use built-in editors. 
 
uh, have you met coders? we do sloppy, shoddy work in the dumbest way possible all the time  

With those low numbers lag is already making some zones unplayable and it influences PvP and other stuff so no idea how this can be seen by anyone as great performance.

Thank you for pointing out a technicality, put a smile on my face lmao

Sorry your highness for only doing this in my free time to your benefit to the best of my abilities and not better. But yes, I will change it.

I see people report it isnt working, when I still had the talent it didnt add 20% like my 4 points should have given but I was of course unable to measure precisely. According to the DU twitter it was nerfed, not disabled. So it took the info in that twitter conversation which was a reduction to 1% per level.

No, that's not what is commonly understood by "engine" -- engine means the game engine itself, which they didn't write. it's an industry-standard term that's well-understood -- "voxel engine" is a server-side component that they created, but not even close to the same level of complexity as a game engine. 

Business as usual and you and I know it.
 
Who still remembers this:
 
https://upvote.dualuniverse.game/
 
 

Alright folks, quick reminder about personal attacks - don't.  Religion, politics, etc are not permitted in our community so please don't go there.  

To get you back on track, yes we're looking into other solutions and better long term solutions for market parking and abandon constructs / salvage opportunities Just because stuff isn't here now, doesn't mean it won't be in the future. 

(basically a re-write of a comment I made, then saw I'd be making the same response to most of these topics and figured I'd just plop it here)
edit: (I start by being generous to the devs, and understanding to the people who aren't so happy, but I give my honest thoughts on it)
 
So, as someone who's done a lot of alpha and beta tests over the past couple decades (on both successful games and ones that deserve to burn in the fieriest regions of Hell), the full change log is actually decent considering the last patch came out about 3 months ago (I had to look that up, so the timeline is about right).  They did do a LOT of tweaking to under-the-hood stuff, which in a game that has so many interconnected elements is a big feat.
 
But then again, I just started back up like a week ago after over a year-and-a-half of being away and letting the turkey bake in the oven without checking it every ten minutes.  So, for me, I've seen a HUGE improvement from alpha, but I know for most of you that have been on this journey the whole time, you're just watching the scenery go by slowly and not really noticing the change as being as impactful as I did.  And after just being back for a week, I'm already seeing a patch go up that's making things look nicer, adds a new voxel object to edit with (and the cone will be fun to play with) and improving a couple tools.  Also, they are putting on some band-aids to the market and GUI showing that they know more needs to be done and are adding the foundation to further improve on it.  So, I'm hopeful, there.

But, as a cynical player, I also really am disappointed that the rotation tool didn't get any additional axes added to it.  And I was hoping that the missions would include a bit more "meat" to it.  Still though, I'm happy they did add a new basis for a major game mechanic (missions) that let you get away from just mining and selling stuff you build from mining, and that they show that they are aware of the issues with the market and building and clutter (gotta till the soil and plant seeds before your crops can grow).
 
So y'know...  I think it's alright.  And I think they're moving in the right direction, and are still very much so involved in trying to produce the product that we all want, even if they're on a shoestring budget.

They haven't added mission system at all though....  and the challenge system they added as an unannounced feature fell apart instantly with abuse. 
 
My biggest issue with it is they created a PTS server after they 'learned' and 'listened' to players after the 0.23 debacle to avoid pushing an update to live that caused major issues. Then not using it to test for issues XD
 
Where they added schematics that were 10x more expensive, and lowered them due to players pitchforks. Oh yeah, they also deleted all meganodes for like a week. Then they lowered they schematics, refunding people- THEN used bot ore buy orders(which deletes ore, and artificially inflates ore prices) to pay players that then deleted quanta by buying schematics for factories that were then nerfed/broken without telling players. Then after bot orders disappeared they added more, but also made schematics 100x cheaper for a short time, where players bought expensive schematics for cheap. wrecking the economy as NQ didn't roll back and has had players reselling the schematics for insane profits... the bot orders also caused players to purchase other players ore off the market and instantly sell to bots for a profit, deleting game resources and making it harder for players to procure ore from buy orders in the short term, and artificially inflating market prices on ore. NQ shut down in game help on the weekends, their busiest time- and have seemingly abandoned discord, forcing players to file a ticket that on average takes months to get a response to. 
 
Meanwhile players eager for a new game play loop and sold that missions were coming months ago get shiny rocks, and an org wallet. All while they backpeddled with the challenges, turning them off and also turning off the games new player tutorials. That's just the start. They also reintroduced bot orders, causing players to buy 'cheap' ore from other players and then sell it to bots for an instant profit, deleting a supply of ore from the markets for players to purchase....  which they did in 0.23 and repeated in 0.24. There is a nice list of more issues. 
 
That all said, even though I hate some of the nee textures, the game looks better and in general runs better, less frame drops, and higher overall FPS. And some of the new voxel tools are great, minus cone. That IMHO doesn't really fix the core game play issues, or the lack of transparent communication from NQ. 
 
As a player I know this is 'beta' but the amount of seeming incompetence on the dev team to push untested code to live and bypassing PTS...  thats just silly to put it mildly. I assume they did it as they know their player numbers are waning and getting anxious and had promised( to us, and probably management) 0.24 was to release in early Q1. 
 
To all the devs and staff at NQ, please take a deep look at other game developers. NQ as a whole has never released a finished product, DU Is the first. JC while passionate and arguably visionary, lacks experience in bringing a game to market. I hope you all take the past months, and years into consideration on how to proceed. I can tell a lot of work went into 0.24, though I hope going forward efforts are a bit more focused on creating better gameplay loops, and less time remaking the existing game (new textures, new launcher, recreated assets, recreating UI but somehow making it worse, looking at you UI team!)  I want to see this game pull a NMS and become the best version of itself, its unique and has a core that IMHO no other game has. 

I am impressed with how surprised people are with the current state of the game. So many of the basic online world design laws were broken here, rules known for years, that all this has only been expected. Including the (IMO justified) community reaction of the vets. Just read the knowledge gathered here by experienced mmo designers: https://www.raphkoster.com/games/laws-of-online-world-design/the-laws-of-online-world-design/.
 
This is exactly the rule explaninig the community reaction:
Mike Sellers’ Hypothesis
“The more persistence a game tries to have; the longer it is set up to last; the greater number (and broader variety) of people it tries to attract; and in general the more immersive a game/world it set out to be–then the more breadth and depth of human experience it needs to support to be successful for more than say, 12-24 months. If you try to create a deeply immersive, broadly appealing, long-lasting world that does not adequately provide for human tendencies such as violence, acquisition, justice, family, community, exploration, etc (and I would contend we are nowhere close to doing this), you will see two results: first, individuals in the population will begin to display a wide range of fairly predictable socially pathological behaviors (including general malaise, complaining, excessive bullying and/or PKing, harassment, territoriality, inappropriate aggression, and open rebellion against those who run the game); and second, people will eventually vote with their feet–but only after having passionately cast ‘a pox on both your houses.’ In essence, if you set people up for an experience they deeply crave (and mostly cannot find in real life) and then don’t deliver, they will become like spurned lovers–some become sullen and aggressive or neurotic, and eventually almost all leave.”
 
It's almost not even worth the time to dig deeper here in more profound mistakes like the strong focus on "player socialization" and trying tho "nudge" people to work together without creating the right framework and conditions, since these subjects were also analyzed and the consequences for any pvp mmo are known for years, see here https://www.raphkoster.com/games/snippets/a-uo-postmortem-of-sorts/ and here https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/02/11/the-eve-upset/ (that last one is especially interesting in the light of the recent robbery of the Empire).
 
Basically, with the strong focus on big orgs and actively punishing small orgs and solos, this is a one way ticket to the failure from a pvp perspective and no bug fixing or nicer plants will change this. On the contrary, you shoud try to prevent big orgs, if you want your game to stay fun for longer. 
 
Here is a citation from the last source in this regard from a designer perspective:
"...Because of the external pressures of sheer survival, you tend to try to join a clan of a reasonable size, and then the clan gets drawn into alliances of a certain size, and so on. There is safety, and strength, in numbers, and the game system is essentially zero-sum for any given conflict. And given the way in which time equals power in EVE, there is a natural tendency towards growth, solidification, and continued existence.
What you end up with is an ecosystem with a classic power law distribution of social group sizes, a scale-free network which is extremely hard to destroy.
This isn’t the first time we have seen this phenomenon in competitive virtual worlds. Famously in Shadowbane, single guilds would tend to come to own entire servers, because the game system there was also zero sum. The result led to boredom, because in a game premised on conflict, the notion of a single eternal empire is dull.
Scale-free networks are notoriously hard to kill. In fact, mathematically, if you start randomly removing connections in the network, you have to remove a ridiculous percentage of the total to make it cease to exist as an entity. This is how guild social structures can survive for years..."
 
Here is another citation, randomly picked from the above mentioned sources, regarding how to let communities emerge, without forcing them directly.
"... Related to the last one–what I now know more about regarding how the Tragedy of the Commons and the Prisoner’s Dilemma are reflected in the lack of communal action, has just reinforced my thoughts on the importance of the Other and so on. Simply put, I think that the things that drive community are: shared interest to get everyone in the same place; limited resources that you need to cooperate over so everyone gets enough; and an enemy you have to fight to keep out (and often, I think that I have served the role of said enemy in this newsgroup). Yes, communities form without the enemy, but they seem to fragment into cliques and manufacture an enemy within themselves (again, like this ng many times!). Shared interest by itself doesn’t really drive community. It drives acquaintanceships. And acquaintanceships are easy to come by, there’s no need to make a whole honkin’ game for them...."
 
Yes, there are ways to support community (and thus civilization) building, but not by repelling the small groups away. That is, if the game should even do something about it, since this will happen on itself, given an interesting game. Further reading for those interestred: https://www.raphkoster.com/2005/12/09/forcing-interaction/
 
o7
 
 

Eh....your name is JizzLobber...don't pretend you have some sort of moral high ground lol. 
 
There's a difference between being toxic and complaining about the factual state of the game.
 
We were asked for feedback, that's the point of beta. We've given that feedback...sometimes 300 times like with market clutter...sorry if it comes off as whining, but not really our fault that NQ is so slow and refuses to fix obvious issues. Give it a few months.
 
But....if the game has improved, the state of the community will improve too -- most people here really like the concept of DU even if they are "cancer". It is because they like the concept so much that they get angry about NQ's lack of progress and communication. 

Eh....your name is JizzLobber...don't pretend you have some sort of moral high ground lol. 
 
There's a difference between being toxic and complaining about the factual state of the game.
 
We were asked for feedback, that's the point of beta. We've given that feedback...sometimes 300 times like with market clutter...sorry if it comes off as whining, but not really our fault that NQ is so slow and refuses to fix obvious issues. Give it a few months.
 
But....if the game has improved, the state of the community will improve too -- most people here really like the concept of DU even if they are "cancer". It is because they like the concept so much that they get angry about NQ's lack of progress and communication. 

The main issue for me is that this theft isn't clever and can be done with complete impunity. 
 
They used the permissions the org gave them -- it wasn't "stealing", it was looting. 
 
If theft is supposed to be an interesting part of the game, it should have a real design.
 
Better feedback for the org to know when it is happening, skills or technique involved beyond just exploiting RDMS, and the ability for the org to actually respond.
 
Otherwise, all it does is encourage a dictator model of organizations because no one can be trusted -- new players never being able to be a part of leadership because they could be a danger instead of an asset.  
 
The fact that there's no recourse makes this more unimpressive -- no reputation system, no bounty system, no crime system, no ability to do anything other than restrict RDMS. 
 
I'm fine with theft being a part of this game, so long as it is a real concept, not some half-assed NQ implementation where one party can operate with impunity. That's not intrigue, it's trolling.
 
Until there's real systems in place to make theft interesting, org property shouldn't be so easy to pilfer. Theft/intrigue is supposed to have risk -- yes more PvP would help, but that's not the only thing required for theft to work as a game concept. 

eh, it's not that simple though...not for any dev project. 
 
You could give NQ another $30 million and it could still fail. 
 
there's many reasons for this :
a larger dev team doesn't mean more output -- more money doesn't mean more development more money doesn't mean strong leadership or strong design more money doesn't erase the last six years of code more money doesn't mean leadership will listen to the talent they do hire Projects don't become easier as they get older, they get more difficult. Having more time or money doesn't ever guarantee success. 
 
beyond the facts of development...it isn't our job to fundraise for NQ -- they are the ones that decided to launch a paid beta and wanted feedback from the players. Not our job to be concerned with player numbers, its our job to provide feedback. 
 
Has this feedback turned into a major crap festival?
 
Sure, I'll admit that. But...that doesn't just happen because people are bored, it happens for good reasons...like having to discuss market clutter 300,000 times or wondering (still in 6+ months of paid beta) exactly how PvP is going to work. 

eh, it's not that simple though...not for any dev project. 
 
You could give NQ another $30 million and it could still fail. 
 
there's many reasons for this :
a larger dev team doesn't mean more output -- more money doesn't mean more development more money doesn't mean strong leadership or strong design more money doesn't erase the last six years of code more money doesn't mean leadership will listen to the talent they do hire Projects don't become easier as they get older, they get more difficult. Having more time or money doesn't ever guarantee success. 
 
beyond the facts of development...it isn't our job to fundraise for NQ -- they are the ones that decided to launch a paid beta and wanted feedback from the players. Not our job to be concerned with player numbers, its our job to provide feedback. 
 
Has this feedback turned into a major crap festival?
 
Sure, I'll admit that. But...that doesn't just happen because people are bored, it happens for good reasons...like having to discuss market clutter 300,000 times or wondering (still in 6+ months of paid beta) exactly how PvP is going to work. 

eh, it's not that simple though...not for any dev project. 
 
You could give NQ another $30 million and it could still fail. 
 
there's many reasons for this :
a larger dev team doesn't mean more output -- more money doesn't mean more development more money doesn't mean strong leadership or strong design more money doesn't erase the last six years of code more money doesn't mean leadership will listen to the talent they do hire Projects don't become easier as they get older, they get more difficult. Having more time or money doesn't ever guarantee success. 
 
beyond the facts of development...it isn't our job to fundraise for NQ -- they are the ones that decided to launch a paid beta and wanted feedback from the players. Not our job to be concerned with player numbers, its our job to provide feedback. 
 
Has this feedback turned into a major crap festival?
 
Sure, I'll admit that. But...that doesn't just happen because people are bored, it happens for good reasons...like having to discuss market clutter 300,000 times or wondering (still in 6+ months of paid beta) exactly how PvP is going to work. 

it again comes down to communication -- it'd be nice to know why nothing has been done in development in the last few months.
 
The new trees/rock assets were purchased from a third party, so really it's just jetpacks and org wallets, which seems like a couple weeks of work, not months. 
 
so...where has the rest of the time gone, exactly...?
 
have they invested the dev time into refactors and bug fixes so they can finally have a stable core that they can build on and maintain...? this is a 6+ year old codebase -- it isn't like code magically gets better as it gets older and bigger -- i'd 100% support spending the time to refactor and improve stability / maintainability...but honestly?
 
sounds like the devs are simply phoning it in. 
 
From their own NL:
"heating up...?" so why does this update read like it would be 2-3 weeks (at most) of work from any other studio...? Does NQ expect that updating their biomes from 1999 visuals to 2010 visuals will completely revitalize the game? 
 
TBH, i feel like NQ's devs mostly sit around and collect their checks.
 
Why should they be motivated to go the extra mile...? i've suspected bad dev morale for a long time and the high turnover, poor reviews around job sites, and complete lack of real progress supports that theory.
 
I expect management is too scared that devs will leave to crack the whip. Not like you can just plug a new dev into a 6-year-old codebase working with an engine no one in the industry uses.
 
sprinkle in work from home, crunch time, and less people needing to do more work and you have very unmotivated devs that always seem to find a valid engineering reason why things don't get done.
 
i don't blame devs for bad management, don't get me wrong -- slow dev is a symptom of a more fundamental issue...if NQ really want to release this year, 0.25 must be literally game-changing. 

eh, it's not that simple though...not for any dev project. 
 
You could give NQ another $30 million and it could still fail. 
 
there's many reasons for this :
a larger dev team doesn't mean more output -- more money doesn't mean more development more money doesn't mean strong leadership or strong design more money doesn't erase the last six years of code more money doesn't mean leadership will listen to the talent they do hire Projects don't become easier as they get older, they get more difficult. Having more time or money doesn't ever guarantee success. 
 
beyond the facts of development...it isn't our job to fundraise for NQ -- they are the ones that decided to launch a paid beta and wanted feedback from the players. Not our job to be concerned with player numbers, its our job to provide feedback. 
 
Has this feedback turned into a major crap festival?
 
Sure, I'll admit that. But...that doesn't just happen because people are bored, it happens for good reasons...like having to discuss market clutter 300,000 times or wondering (still in 6+ months of paid beta) exactly how PvP is going to work. 

it again comes down to communication -- it'd be nice to know why nothing has been done in development in the last few months.
 
The new trees/rock assets were purchased from a third party, so really it's just jetpacks and org wallets, which seems like a couple weeks of work, not months. 
 
so...where has the rest of the time gone, exactly...?
 
have they invested the dev time into refactors and bug fixes so they can finally have a stable core that they can build on and maintain...? this is a 6+ year old codebase -- it isn't like code magically gets better as it gets older and bigger -- i'd 100% support spending the time to refactor and improve stability / maintainability...but honestly?
 
sounds like the devs are simply phoning it in. 
 
From their own NL:
"heating up...?" so why does this update read like it would be 2-3 weeks (at most) of work from any other studio...? Does NQ expect that updating their biomes from 1999 visuals to 2010 visuals will completely revitalize the game? 
 
TBH, i feel like NQ's devs mostly sit around and collect their checks.
 
Why should they be motivated to go the extra mile...? i've suspected bad dev morale for a long time and the high turnover, poor reviews around job sites, and complete lack of real progress supports that theory.
 
I expect management is too scared that devs will leave to crack the whip. Not like you can just plug a new dev into a 6-year-old codebase working with an engine no one in the industry uses.
 
sprinkle in work from home, crunch time, and less people needing to do more work and you have very unmotivated devs that always seem to find a valid engineering reason why things don't get done.
 
i don't blame devs for bad management, don't get me wrong -- slow dev is a symptom of a more fundamental issue...if NQ really want to release this year, 0.25 must be literally game-changing. 

What is fucking wrong with this community?  Y'all need Jesus lol.  The cringe here is just obscene.

Listen, the first guy OP dude up there had a bad take, but it came from a genuine concern and one that NQ has even addressed as a problem.  But....in this thread, some of your responses are just sooo goddamn toxic that you might as well just say them to yourself out loud because no effing way you're convincing anyone with that kind of talk, and you're  honestly going to even turn off people who may had originally thought as you did *cough cough*
 
But to the point...you can't just wipe someone's account for people who payed into it and who have spent time on it, just because they let their game sub lapse.  There are all kinds of reasons people may take a break:
Military Service (Which can last for a year or more depending on deployment zone and stop-loss or w/e other countries call it)
Pregnancy
New Job
Natural Disaster
Medical Problems or Hospitalization
Starting School
Financial Problems
Or any other personal reason for taking a break to focus time elsewhere
 
The magic blueprint idea is good, because clutter can be bad.  And I'd say give it 14 days after a sub runs out, but yeah in protected areas 12-24h whether sub is active or not (that gives people at least 1 paycheck to restart it)
 
This could had been a legitimate and real conversation with some possible systems that would had been good to implement, but you guys just went salty and sad like immediately.

In very many of my previous posts I have described the view from the paying customers. Until recently, it was even the case that players could still play after their subscription had expired, which would make me a little suspicious even as a paying customer. Don't get me wrong, this is not about me at all. I'm reflecting this whole view from a customer. To put it mildly, I would feel like a fool if I had a 1-year subscription and the other person could only continue playing after a 1-month subscription.
 
Why have so many old players quit? Especially since they were backers / supporters who didn't even have to pay for the beta. At the latest when another developer studio takes your company as an example of how NOT to do it, I would rethink my strategy. 
 
Seeing past your unqualified statements, I'll casually mention once without breaking the NDA that I've been in Alpha Team Vanguard (ATV) since 2017. 
Maybe you should look up what ATV means again. We have jumped from the original ~600k euros that were funded to 20 million. There has been no lack of time and money in recent years. I would rather call it mismanagement.
 
The stories, in terms of actions, decisions, lack of communication and the points I have listed above all speak their own story.
I am only the messenger. I just make sure that all this is not forgotten. Even if people will hear it several times. You are free to ignore me at any time.  Just as customers and new players should be left to weigh up for themselves whether they should buy into Beta under these conditions or not. And I think it's only right not to do this with rose-coloured glasses.
 
And it is not helpful when people try to silence others.
 
 

Harder to fix fundamental issues with the economic model.
 
Either ore vanishes or money supply does -- hate to keep rehashing ye 'ole deflation discussion with currency supply, but that's what it comes down to. 
 
Reality: NQ has no designs for the economy, for PvP, or for how the game's main "features" are supposed to work in general. People love to talk about what DU "will be eventually," but that future required planning....and they never bothered to plan out this game. Never.
 
It was all just a vague series of grand promises with players left to fill in the blanks.
 
This is the "Lost" of video games -- people are intrigued by the mystery of an intricate world built on a promise it will all connect...but the writers are just trying to stay one episode ahead and the house of cards inevitably crumbles when we all realize "there was no plan" all along. 

Harder to fix fundamental issues with the economic model.
 
Either ore vanishes or money supply does -- hate to keep rehashing ye 'ole deflation discussion with currency supply, but that's what it comes down to. 
 
Reality: NQ has no designs for the economy, for PvP, or for how the game's main "features" are supposed to work in general. People love to talk about what DU "will be eventually," but that future required planning....and they never bothered to plan out this game. Never.
 
It was all just a vague series of grand promises with players left to fill in the blanks.
 
This is the "Lost" of video games -- people are intrigued by the mystery of an intricate world built on a promise it will all connect...but the writers are just trying to stay one episode ahead and the house of cards inevitably crumbles when we all realize "there was no plan" all along.