blundertwink

In my opinion, you're wrongly conflating your personal experience with public perception. Also, 3 update cycles to fix bugs is hardly good when their typical release cadence is 1 update every 2 months...
 
The only evidence that matters is the pace and content of updates.
 
If you're saying 1.1 and 1.2 offered a lot of content and fixed a ton of bugs...well, I wouldn't agree with this claim that the game is more stable or feature-rich...and player demographics would suggest that no one else buys this, either.
 
4 months is a long time for a sub-based game, especially when DU was supposed to still be riding a huge wave of popularity post-release.
 
This is the only way sub-based games work...the first few months are supposed to be the zenith, but DU barely made a splash and has since only lost players. 
 
DU's development is slow compared to any other sub-based MMO -- they haven't given the game stability or feature depth, there's no evidence they will ever do so, and the vast majority of people that try the game see the same thing. 
 
It's fine if you like the game, but insisting that DU's development pace is actually fine after so little has changed in 4 months is baffling and misunderstand how this whole genre works. 

Which is kind of my point..."the bulk of the players" represents a tiny, tiny segment of gamers mostly limited to people that have played since alpha or beta.
 
There's should be no illusion that DU's largest distribution platform by far is Steam, not organic growth from its own launcher. 
 
I'm glad that you like the game, honestly. There are things to like without a doubt...but it's a subscription MMO.
 
A few gamers liking it isn't enough.
 
The dismal loss of players on Steam and the lack of apparent organic growth anywhere else is why I don't have faith that NQ will figure out how to make the game popular. 
 
It isn't enough to like the game or even to think the game is good, the game has to be popular for it to survive as a sub-based MMO. 

At this point, it's a really bad idea to put a lot of effort into DU in general...there's no reason to invest a bunch of time in a subscription game where there's only a few hundred people playing at a time. 
 
If NQ has 10,000 subs (which they likely don't even have that), their employees would make about as much revenue as DU delivering DoorDash 8 hours a workday...likely more.
 
When it comes to picking where to invest your time, I don't think DU is a great place...because there's no way they can hold the current player counts and stay online forever.
 
Yeah the company has made really bad choices that have frustrated and annoyed players like the OP...but even if you put that aside, it would be a weird choice to invest a lot of time in a game that is not sustainable. 

Which is kind of my point..."the bulk of the players" represents a tiny, tiny segment of gamers mostly limited to people that have played since alpha or beta.
 
There's should be no illusion that DU's largest distribution platform by far is Steam, not organic growth from its own launcher. 
 
I'm glad that you like the game, honestly. There are things to like without a doubt...but it's a subscription MMO.
 
A few gamers liking it isn't enough.
 
The dismal loss of players on Steam and the lack of apparent organic growth anywhere else is why I don't have faith that NQ will figure out how to make the game popular. 
 
It isn't enough to like the game or even to think the game is good, the game has to be popular for it to survive as a sub-based MMO. 

Which is kind of my point..."the bulk of the players" represents a tiny, tiny segment of gamers mostly limited to people that have played since alpha or beta.
 
There's should be no illusion that DU's largest distribution platform by far is Steam, not organic growth from its own launcher. 
 
I'm glad that you like the game, honestly. There are things to like without a doubt...but it's a subscription MMO.
 
A few gamers liking it isn't enough.
 
The dismal loss of players on Steam and the lack of apparent organic growth anywhere else is why I don't have faith that NQ will figure out how to make the game popular. 
 
It isn't enough to like the game or even to think the game is good, the game has to be popular for it to survive as a sub-based MMO. 

I mean...this is actually true. 
 
NQ doesn't engage meaningfully with any ideas or discussions here.
 
They really don't want any idea, suggestions, or feedback unless it is "balanced" with compliments and praise, too. 
 
Maybe NQ would disagree, but this is a lesson NQ has taught the community many, many times over the past 8 years. It's demonstrated over and over with their actions over the almost-decade it's taken them to publish a vastly unfinished "game". 
 
So no, they really don't want your ideas. You're free to post ideas in the general forum...but they will not be read, they will not be considered, they will not be acknowledged. 

I mean...this is actually true. 
 
NQ doesn't engage meaningfully with any ideas or discussions here.
 
They really don't want any idea, suggestions, or feedback unless it is "balanced" with compliments and praise, too. 
 
Maybe NQ would disagree, but this is a lesson NQ has taught the community many, many times over the past 8 years. It's demonstrated over and over with their actions over the almost-decade it's taken them to publish a vastly unfinished "game". 
 
So no, they really don't want your ideas. You're free to post ideas in the general forum...but they will not be read, they will not be considered, they will not be acknowledged. 

I mean...this is actually true. 
 
NQ doesn't engage meaningfully with any ideas or discussions here.
 
They really don't want any idea, suggestions, or feedback unless it is "balanced" with compliments and praise, too. 
 
Maybe NQ would disagree, but this is a lesson NQ has taught the community many, many times over the past 8 years. It's demonstrated over and over with their actions over the almost-decade it's taken them to publish a vastly unfinished "game". 
 
So no, they really don't want your ideas. You're free to post ideas in the general forum...but they will not be read, they will not be considered, they will not be acknowledged. 

I mean...this is actually true. 
 
NQ doesn't engage meaningfully with any ideas or discussions here.
 
They really don't want any idea, suggestions, or feedback unless it is "balanced" with compliments and praise, too. 
 
Maybe NQ would disagree, but this is a lesson NQ has taught the community many, many times over the past 8 years. It's demonstrated over and over with their actions over the almost-decade it's taken them to publish a vastly unfinished "game". 
 
So no, they really don't want your ideas. You're free to post ideas in the general forum...but they will not be read, they will not be considered, they will not be acknowledged. 

I mean...this is actually true. 
 
NQ doesn't engage meaningfully with any ideas or discussions here.
 
They really don't want any idea, suggestions, or feedback unless it is "balanced" with compliments and praise, too. 
 
Maybe NQ would disagree, but this is a lesson NQ has taught the community many, many times over the past 8 years. It's demonstrated over and over with their actions over the almost-decade it's taken them to publish a vastly unfinished "game". 
 
So no, they really don't want your ideas. You're free to post ideas in the general forum...but they will not be read, they will not be considered, they will not be acknowledged. 

I think 10,000 subs is likely a large overestimate.  Right now Haven has 22,000 tiles claimed, meaning that only 22,000 distinct characters have ever been subbed.  10,000 accounts would imply that nearly 50% of the player base who started are still subscribed.  But that 22,000 includes all the steam accounts which were refunded by exploiters, all the 2 week free accounts for people who previously subscribed, etc. 
 
But you can tell from the activity on the markets (and around them) and just looking at the lack of change in the game that there are a lot fewer people playing now than there were then.  I'd say 5,000 is probably generous.  The steam numbers tell a similar story.

Even then, a lot of people were pushed into getting long subscriptions by the price rises, need for long subs to get the reward packs, etc.  A lot of people are running their accounts on DAC too which they buy with quanta because mission running is so broken they can easily make enough to buy a lot of DAC.  That money was probably long since spent so I bet that monthly sub income is looking really small right now.

At this point, it's a really bad idea to put a lot of effort into DU in general...there's no reason to invest a bunch of time in a subscription game where there's only a few hundred people playing at a time. 
 
If NQ has 10,000 subs (which they likely don't even have that), their employees would make about as much revenue as DU delivering DoorDash 8 hours a workday...likely more.
 
When it comes to picking where to invest your time, I don't think DU is a great place...because there's no way they can hold the current player counts and stay online forever.
 
Yeah the company has made really bad choices that have frustrated and annoyed players like the OP...but even if you put that aside, it would be a weird choice to invest a lot of time in a game that is not sustainable. 

At this point, it's a really bad idea to put a lot of effort into DU in general...there's no reason to invest a bunch of time in a subscription game where there's only a few hundred people playing at a time. 
 
If NQ has 10,000 subs (which they likely don't even have that), their employees would make about as much revenue as DU delivering DoorDash 8 hours a workday...likely more.
 
When it comes to picking where to invest your time, I don't think DU is a great place...because there's no way they can hold the current player counts and stay online forever.
 
Yeah the company has made really bad choices that have frustrated and annoyed players like the OP...but even if you put that aside, it would be a weird choice to invest a lot of time in a game that is not sustainable. 

At this point, it's a really bad idea to put a lot of effort into DU in general...there's no reason to invest a bunch of time in a subscription game where there's only a few hundred people playing at a time. 
 
If NQ has 10,000 subs (which they likely don't even have that), their employees would make about as much revenue as DU delivering DoorDash 8 hours a workday...likely more.
 
When it comes to picking where to invest your time, I don't think DU is a great place...because there's no way they can hold the current player counts and stay online forever.
 
Yeah the company has made really bad choices that have frustrated and annoyed players like the OP...but even if you put that aside, it would be a weird choice to invest a lot of time in a game that is not sustainable. 

This idea that no matter what someone will complain, so therefore all complaints are moot is boring and pointless. 
 
Anyone that whines about "complaints" on a forum where the stated goal is to collect feedback doesn't seem to understand what feedback even is...opposite opinions don't cancel out like maths, they are just different opinions with different reasoning.
 
The existence of opposite opinions doesn't mean anything other than this is a forum where people have opinions, so I really don't get what your point is with this. 
 
This explanation of "the game isn't empty" is that the larger markets "almost always" have "a player" there.
 
That...kind of proves my point, if anything. The game is empty and you have to go out of your way to maybe see a player...never mind actually interacting with them, because there's few ways to do that. 
 
If the most recent example of players interacting in any real meaningful way is a pre-arranged PvP event from weeks ago...that's not helping to show that DU is not an empty game. 
 
Having less than 10,000 people online at a time during peak means it is an empty game, especially with DU being so new (when it's supposed to be riding its height of popularity as a sub-based game). 
 
This is just an undeniable fact of the MMO genre: a few hundred people playing at a time during peak isn't an MMO.

I personally think it's hilarious that AvA or TW are "too hard" for NQ....in a game with no NPCs, they don't have the bandwidth for player interactions.
 
There's no PVE eating server resources, but they don't have the resources to do PvP at scale...? 
 
When you take a step back and look at DU as it's designed, they've accomplished next to nothing in terms of making a game...
 
The only core facet that sort of works in a finished, production-ready way is building. That's literally it -- mining they still don't understand, PvP is obviously not complete, missions are a joke, and performance is somehow bad with no one playing and no PvE or PvP at scale. 
 
 
Honestly, we all know this isn't going to happen but there's so many core, core issues with DU and so little that's actually complete that this is likely the only way they could truly make a game that works. 
 
Of course, that assumes they've actually learned anything with the last 8 years of development on DU...I'm not convinced they have learned a single thing from their many bad choices in the design an development of DU and would expect essentially the same result. 

I've said this before, but the biggest sink in any MMO is player churn.
 
What percent of WoW items and gold are just sitting on inactive accounts collecting dust? Likely the vast majority of all the money and items ever "printed" into the game. 
 
Honestly, I'm not sure I much care about the "economy" of any MMO, overall...I'm just not the sort of player that cares to "play the markets" as a facet of gameplay.
 
What matters to me is that earning money is fun and that it is motivating because there's stuff I want to buy.  
 
In games, that is the primary driver of a good economy in my opinion -- actual interest in wanting to earn and spend money because it drives engagement with the game, overall. 
 
Earning money just to pay taxes is an objectively stupid design idea that undermines the whole point of having a currency system in games to begin with! it isn't to create a fake economy just for the sake of having an economy. 
 
This isn't complicated stuff; it's like they put quanta into the game without understanding why currency exists in video games. Game economies are not at all like real world economies.
 
NQ needs to step back and think about how to make their game fun; the state of the economy really doesn't matter if there's nothing fun to do with it.

There's a very timeless and wise adage about game design that's very relevant for NQ: nothing is ever the player's fault. 
 
Designers that fight against this ideal invariably make unpopular games.
 
I'm not talking about dumbing things down to the point where there's no complexity, I'm talking about good design through UI, UX, feedbacks, affordances, and (to a lesser extent) tutorials.
 
There's a world of difference between stupidity and ignorance, and it's really unwise to assume that a given player even cares enough to find the "right way to do something" when the game is so disengaging overall. It's DU's job to motivate players to find engaging gameplay and tell players how to advance.
 
If players don't understand how to play the game in a way that gives them the means to advance, that's objectively bad design.
 
Honestly, most people don't give two shits about the economy in an MMO, they care about markets -- because they want to buy things to advance in the game, not to get rich for its own sake. 
 
The vast majority of MMO players engage with the economy as a means to an end -- profit isn't the main driver for most players,  gameplay is. 
 
 
Which is a big part of the problem, that the only people still playing have been playing since Alpha...
 
If that's the only crowd around, the economy will never reach any point of balance or fun because there's simply not enough players.
 
The issue of balance can't be solved when the design assumes a level of scale that will never, ever materialize. And that scale won't materialize if NQ believes things are fine, but people are just playing the game wrong. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2023
-k-

Satisfactory has literally 158 times more people playing right now compared to DU. 
 
So...the vast, vast majority of people that do enjoy factory building games play something else. 
 
DU has ~0.36% as many players compared to the people playing Satisfactory and Factorio right now...so even if DU only attracts a factory building type of crowd, it's massively unsuccessful in that genre. 
 
Granted those are very popular games, but the point is that DU is immensely unpopular no matter the type of player. DU is not even close to the same league as those games in terms of popularity -- by a huge, huge margin. 
 
So far, NQ hasn't shown any vestige of a plan to improve the game through updates or a change in strategy. They keep staying the course and wondering why no one is playing. 
 
My advice is to enjoy DU while you can (if you enjoy it) because I don't see any evidence that it can survive as a commercial product with NQ maintaining the status quot. 

I've said this before, but the biggest sink in any MMO is player churn.
 
What percent of WoW items and gold are just sitting on inactive accounts collecting dust? Likely the vast majority of all the money and items ever "printed" into the game. 
 
Honestly, I'm not sure I much care about the "economy" of any MMO, overall...I'm just not the sort of player that cares to "play the markets" as a facet of gameplay.
 
What matters to me is that earning money is fun and that it is motivating because there's stuff I want to buy.  
 
In games, that is the primary driver of a good economy in my opinion -- actual interest in wanting to earn and spend money because it drives engagement with the game, overall. 
 
Earning money just to pay taxes is an objectively stupid design idea that undermines the whole point of having a currency system in games to begin with! it isn't to create a fake economy just for the sake of having an economy. 
 
This isn't complicated stuff; it's like they put quanta into the game without understanding why currency exists in video games. Game economies are not at all like real world economies.
 
NQ needs to step back and think about how to make their game fun; the state of the economy really doesn't matter if there's nothing fun to do with it.

100% -- the fact that orgs need to give people "destroy the world" permissions just to get stuff done is itself a problem that can and should be solved within the game rules. 
 
The challenge is that any real solution isn't realistic because it would require too much work.
 
NQ didn't design this properly from the get-go and it's probably too late to fix it now. 
 
They had ample time to fix it when this happened during beta -- any idiot could see that this wasn't a realistic "mechanic" for release...especially in a sub-based MMO with no NPCs where there's so damn little to do. 
 
If orgs are going to be so vital to keep people engaged, their property should be entirely separate from personal property.
 
There should be specific rules for when org property is allowed to become personal property -- e.g. only from specific dispensers which have quotas. If you donate something to an org, you can't take it back except through those specific means. 
 
Any logistical operations that would require a legate to "take stuff" temporarily can be refactored in a variety of ways...for example, org property could be tagged so it can't be resold or transferred to third parties, or reverts back to org control somehow...or probably best, implement mechanics such that orgs don't need to grant elevated permissions to begin with!
 
There's infinite ideas on how to make this work...but the point is that orgs are a central concept in DU and the effort you put into them needs to be somewhat protected. 
 
If the only real currency is trust because theft can't be retaliated against in any meaningful way...that's not remotely scalable in an MMO, especially one with so little else to do.
 
You can't both say "you need an org to really enjoy DU" and "orgs are entirely trust based and anything you contribute can vanish because one person gets bored or unsubs". 
 
People can say "welcome to the harsh reality of DU" and claim it's just part of the game....but saying "it's part of the game" doesn't work when the game has so few players and is shrinking steadily.
 
Yet NQ can't even accept that permissions are a problem...never-mind actually implementing a solution.
 
Hence why after 3 months their numbers are so abysmal...honestly, with player counts like this, they don't even need a mechanical solution and bugging GMs to fix things wouldn't even be such a burden, lol. 
 

Explain how "not giving perms to dishonest people" is supposed to work, though...? How are you supposed to know who is or isn't honest in a game, especially one where there's no repercussions for stealing because NQ insists it is "emergent gameplay"...?
 
Theft isn't "emergent gameplay", because theft is literally just using RDMS as intended -- emergence is an interaction of features, not using one feature exactly the way it was coded.
 
It isn't "gameplay", either, because it has no consequence -- PvP is barely implemented and there is no reputation or legal system of course. There is no gameplay whatsoever around theft. 
 
It's the game's job to manage ownership and property in a way where everyone can contribute to orgs without the org crumbling because a legate gets bored and tears it all down.
 
And let's be honest, when NQ had their market destroyed...they responded with bans...so maybe it's a bit silly to suggest that the end-all answer is "just configure RDMS right" when even NQ has made mistakes. 

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