jkspartan

Auto-Mining:
Before I get into my major concerns I would like to say thank you for replacing the current system of mining underground with something better than "click, watch circle get big, release." I think the system holds a lot of potential if balanced right, will be more rewarding than the current mining system, and I am glad that it can help NQ unburden some overhead cost, especially as the player base must be much smaller than NQ's business model accounted for.

My only concern with mining-units is the "chicken or egg" dynamic of need to have same tier ore to build the mining unit. Where I feel it would be more sensible to require T2 ore for a T3 unit, T3 ore for a T4 unit, etc. Otherwise NQ risks progression locking players with a mechanic that subjects them to predatory exploitation of players who have gotten to T4 and T5 already. 

If players are willing to exploit mechanics to gain billions in quanta they will not hesitate to exploit players to stratify the economy and widen the gap between a few with everything and the mass majority with the left overs.


Territory Tax:
NQ claims that a player driven economy and player made content is the backbone of the game. Yet builders who are working hundreds if not thousands of hours over the past two years risk losing the most with projects that are focused on building unique locations for others to visit.

Building and selling blueprints is simply not competitive with the earnings made through current mining, and with changes to the economy sales of ship and building designs has gone off the cliff as everyone hoards currency and materials to survive upcoming changes.

I also feel that a clear and final tile tax rates MUST be announced 30-60 days before Demeter release to give adequate time for organization of assets to prevent huge and punishing loses to the creative community within Dual Universe.

People simply need to know what they will and won't lose and what to do to safeguard their hard work, NQ's ambiguity simply drives ambiguity, and snarky responses from support team when players want to know if they can reasonably expect to earn enough from auto-mining to cover taxes for the number of tiles they own is simply inflammatory.
 

In-Game Abuse Reports:
I am hoping bans won't become automated, and will also have a review system that takes context of the situation into account. It is well known we have members of the community who bait, troll, and instigate to produce reactions that they can then report to weaponize the NQ support staff against players.

Some of these people are the same individuals who have exploited, and abused mechanics to gain advantage over the players they taunt and bait with their comments.

Also feel rule #10 of the Code of Conduct should be removed from the CoC, as the demographic of the player base on average is well above 30 years of age, and there are things that 8 year old's say these days that make me blush. It is no secret that colorful language is often present in passionate expression ideals, dissatisfaction etc. 

The rule is ambiguous as to how much profanity is excessive, and it is well known players purposefully instigate and antagonize others into the point of frustration where profanity is used and then weaponize abuse reports against them. 

It is a highly dishonorable tactic that needs addressing.

My use of a four letter word, or expression of frustration is by no means as harmful to the community as the exploits, use of alt accounts, etc. for players to manipulate the economy, and gain huge material advantage over those they taunt and troll.

This while seeming off topic I believe will become highly relevant with in game abuse reports coming in Demeter.


Voxelmancy Tools:
Last but not least I want to thank you for working to provide tools to make building more accessible to everyone, I think this is awesome. My only concern here is will this cause more "invalid cell error" issues in the future?


Closing Summary:
Thank you very much for the work being put into DU, I know I am critical of some of the decisions. Mainly I just have a huge fear of losing hundreds if not thousands of hours of work. Dual Universe is the one place I feel I have my little slice of peace to escape from RL stress. 

I don't need to be rich, or have the best guns, or even biggest ship... I treat my tile territories as a carefully maintained zen garden, and right now I see fire burning all around that garden threatening to take it away. To take away the very little peace I have some days.

I work with victims of violent crime, sexual assault and domestic abuse with my job as a government contractor, trying to help them rebuild after horrible events. It is a job that is emotionally taxing, and Dual Universe is how I cope with the stresses of that job, and the risks of harm and even death from violent people who would do me harm to get to the survivors they have victimized.

Respectfully,

Creator

 

Sone Observation/Comments
 
1) I have 3 miners in this tile all reporting a production rate of 86.34L.x 3 = 259.02. If you look at the pool of 301 then there should still be an available balance for extraction of 41.98L but it says 0 available 0/301.
 
2) Maximum of 10 charges and a rate of 1 charge for per 4.25 hours (with talents) if it was a fresh tile and the person started with 0 charges and a tile needed 15 miners (as an example) that is 63.75 hours to get all the miners going. Degradation of charges starts after 48 hours and we are only looking at 1 tile.
 
3) Ore extraction rates of 100L. There are rocks around me on the ground and they each yield 20L. I'm not going to do the maths but I can pick up a hell of lot of those in an hour in comparison and this even pales compared to the amount minable from an asteroid in an hour or just the current underground mining.
 
4) When MU's were first mentioned I thought they were going to provide a small supplemental supply of ore to just bring in some of those tier 1 items that are needed for manufacturing. I thought they were going to be additional to current underground mining. There are only so many hours in a day and if a higher tier resource is valued at 900q then mining that product for an hour is obviously a better return than an hour spent mining something worth 50q.
 
The market to me suggests the health of a game and it is fair to say there are MASSIVE ore shortages currently with prices gradually creeping up. It wasn't long ago the ship builders who advertised on DU-Creators a badass M core hauler for say 150m and they could turn a profit and prices were stable enough. If you look at what's happened one by one from the smallest solo builder to the largest suppliers the narrative has changed. If you want to go and buy a ship now the response is its going to take days to get the parts AND we aren't sure of the prices. I predict that the amount of ore available to manufacturers will be a LOT lower than is even currently in the system, especially while the replacement to underground mining gets under way. One example of inflation the Alioth price for Warp Cells used to be down around 9k each now they are 32.5k
 
In view of your technical issues with holes in the ground and planets being turned into swiss cheese perhaps a good balance may be to have the holes refill after a month for unowned tiles. That would mean underground bases would remain while also provide a renewing amount of mining resources without the need to store the huge amount of data as is currently the situation.  Scans could remain current for untouched tiles but those that have been mined the scans could be flagged as expired and require rescanning.

There are ways to kick inactive players without taxing the current player base to death i.e. out of the game and yes and no on the mining will bring enough ore to pay the taxes if the prices of ore fall then what. Now we all know that is not likely to happen in the short term but it could then there would not be enough to pay the taxes and that is also a relative term and really driven by how many tiles each player owns. 

There are ways to kick inactive players without taxing the current player base to death i.e. out of the game and yes and no on the mining will bring enough ore to pay the taxes if the prices of ore fall then what. Now we all know that is not likely to happen in the short term but it could then there would not be enough to pay the taxes and that is also a relative term and really driven by how many tiles each player owns. 

There are ways to kick inactive players without taxing the current player base to death i.e. out of the game and yes and no on the mining will bring enough ore to pay the taxes if the prices of ore fall then what. Now we all know that is not likely to happen in the short term but it could then there would not be enough to pay the taxes and that is also a relative term and really driven by how many tiles each player owns. 

As many as it takes for NQ to realize that the way this is currently being implemented is a bad idea and will likely result in more people leaving the games already dwindling player base?

1: The numbers are way too low. They need to be upped significantly to be viable even without taxes. To make up for this you would need to up Asteroid Ore Nodes a lot, and greatly increase the number of safe zone asteroids, and start including rare ore spawns into the safe zone. There is a problem if you can mine more ore in less than a minute by playing cookie clicker surface mining then what using a powerful technological mining marvel can pull out in an hour.

2: The ore Market is already inflated, and that's with the ability to mine more Ore in an Hour Currently than you could in a couple weeks with a mining unit.  As it stands with current values, you will continue to wreck the player economy and market.

3: What's the point of adding adjacent territory bonus of 10% per territory, if you have to pay a heavy territory tax for that small boost to ore extraction. As with point 1, the numbers are way to low to justify this.

4: While I am a fan of using some elements in ship design to give them that rugged Sci-Fi look, forcing people to have to show every single element on a ship is just a bad decision. Some elements it makes sense. Hovers, Boosters, Engines being obstructed, makes sense. But when you need 50 brakes, and 100 wings to make a large ship flyable with cargo, not being able to hide some of those elements is just dumb.

5: I am glad the Space Industry not working is a bug. Taxing PvE Space Industry/Activities is another way to drive off more players. 

@NQPann and & @NQDeckard:
 
The element collision changes modified the collision boxes of existing elements. This will cause ship builders who believed they were building ships that were "as nq intended" and sold ships as "not stacked" to have customers come to them reporting that the element list is showing stacked elements. Compounding the problem is that it only reports the type of element that is now "stacked" without giving any visual indicator as to which specific element is considered "stacked". You have told us it's your intention to disable elements considered stacked.
 
Additionally you are changing brakes so the tops have to be exposed to the outside of the ship (without actually changing the indicating visual that shows the leading edge as the impacted portion that needs to be exposed). This change will cause most ships in the game to become obsolete without major changes. 
 
These two changes are game breaking. Why are you pushing two game breaking changes while also fundamentally changing how resources are allocated, collected, and imposing a 1m per week tax per territory on every player in the game? This feels like the kind of upset I heard from my friends who no longer play the game before the .23 patch went live. Please explain why this is necessary and how you are going to keep this from becoming another exodus.

This is the final nail in the lid for this game.   If they cant see that by now there is no hope.  
 
Another game comes to mind that is dead set on not paying attention to the majority of players and listens to the vocal minority. They have barley 400 people playing on weekends now.  They are using that as an example,  Good work NQ.  lol 

So, here are some questions. This time I even spent time on the PTS and watched the full video first

-Demeter fees will pull a lot of money "out of the system" and slow the inflation or even reverse it (deflation). The 1M per week fee is set now, at a time when it is equivalent to only 10kl or hematite, or one t2 engine L. Will you adjust the fee should the buying power of the quanta change significantly? The whole "player driven economy" is, by far, not really player driven anymore, and this patch is yet another step in that direction, the fixed rates for schematics, missions, other bot buy and sell orders, and now territory fees see to that.

-I generally like airbrakes now finally getting an obstruction zone, however the current direction indicated by the yellow arrows is not only unintuitive but would also just lead to players stacking them on the inside of the craft pointing outwards to the sides. On the current PTS it appears the obstruction is checked above the brakes (if placed on horizontal surface). What are the plans for the direction of the obstruction directions for the airbrakes?
 
-This is a nice reminder that plenty of items have obstruction zones which dictate a certain usage, which is often not visually pleasing, intuitive or, for better lack of word, "feels right". Any plans for an overall overhaul of obstruction mechanics and directions?
 
-To use mining units to their full potention, by at least never wasting charges because the charge pool is already full, you have to log in almost daily (every 30h with no talents, every 35h with full charge gain and pool talents). It feels rather tight. Do you think DU is a game for casuals, RP players, weekend warriors and others who are not playing in a regular profit oriented way? (So not like me   ).
 
-My first ever ship sale was to a player who just travels the planets and maintains a little base on almost every planet and moon. Quite serene and dreamy actually. He will now have to set up mining units and get into business, or collect rocks, or quit. He is not allowed to continue the way he is used to play. The fee is too high for that. Patch .23 stopped groups of people from having autonomous outposts and building civilisation away from alioth. Demeter now stops another group of players from playing their way. What is the intended and therefore likely future-proof way to play DU? 
 
-With planet based mining gone, yet another thing to actually do in the game is removed. For players who have time on saturdays there is still asteroid mining, for the rest there are AI missions, which consist of taking off and waiting for 5h to arrive, assuming you do one that actually pays something. Player made long distance haul missions can not compete with AI missions. Any plans on revisiting Apelia missions, their payout, or the fact that the long distance ones are overly profitable with multiple accounts or "car sharing" via VR?
 
-Related to above: Any plans to add anything to the game that is fun to do and at the same time brings an amount of resources?

-In order to find asteroids you need access to a DSAT which is t3. In order to mine t3 via units you also need t3 ore for the advanced autominer. Will it be impossible to get t3 ore without already existing t3 ore?
 
 
 
 

Well, where to start, maybe with the definition of play:
 
Play is an activity that is performed without conscious purpose for pleasure, for relaxation, for the joy of itself and its result.
 
I chose Dual Universe as a game and not as a job.
 
Here was a text wall I spare you I tried to reduce it to a few points.
 
If Dementer Patch comes like it did on the PTS server, I will pack my things and go to the Sanctuary Moon.
I will not buy any more ships because I don't know if they will work tomorrow.
Also, I can't recommend the game or rather the working simulation at the moment.
I am annoyed that I invested the time and continued to play/work after the 0.23 patch to provide myself with schematics.
I will wait and see if the game survives.
 
Maybe NQ should hire someone who knows about game design.
 
To all others I wish a relaxing busy game.

I see others commenting on the taxes if they are that high and I have not even gotten that far yet then you can forget it you are about to loose the rest of the player base which is about 8 people 

For anybody wondering about the numbers, AKA the amounts of ore you can get per players, I did some math in this thread:
 


TL:DR: maxed out you can get 150kl of ore, per day, per player

Yeah, BISHA, my L-Core, which, oh the Irony, was just featured in NQs Community Showcase, has over 70 Large Air Brakes.
There is no way I can "redesign" the ship without making it effing UGLY and basically COMPLETELY COVER THE OUTSIDE of the ship with BRAKES ... Bye bye nice polished voxel body ...

Don't even get me started on my KOKRRA, SPHERE SHIP .... haha 

For people who have been waiting to come back to this game, I think you have pretty much wrapped it up for them with the airbrakes and taxes.  These are things that should be done at a later time, not mashing in a bunch of changes all at once.  This many "shocker" changes at once is what led to so many leaving the game during the schematic debacle.
Mining unit idea is great, as it is on the roadmap and creates something new.  Work with that.
Voxel change... good, and I hope it works.  In theory, should reduce lag and improve performance.  Those two alone should keep your devs busy for months with the bugs likely to come about.  However, the taxes and airbrakes, will definitely reduce the lag as more players leave, and no way old players, like myself, will be returning.  Players are going to be busy enough having to dig out their structures as it is!  Having to rework or even scrap current ships due to the airbrake thing is not a way to keep players.  Implementing taxes on our territories on top of all of this?  Are you serious???
Please reconsider this.  Add things to do rather than penalties and nerfs.  Taxes on territories should be a release time "tweak", not a named patch feature.

My guess is if this goes to live server as is and these taxes are not reduced significantly or done away with all together this is the end of this game 

Would you be this anti if it was called "maintenance fees" instead of taxes?  I agree the amount is a bit too high, but the point of the tax system was to keep tiles from being locked from inactive players.   I think there is some math to be worked out, but I think the reason behind the tax is a good reason, just needs some math and some patience to listen to the community, but it's not a game breaker.  If anything, it's a game helper to make tiles available to new players, or existing players who are trying to expand.  Also, to your last point I think driving the real.estate market I to the hands or organizations is kind of the point, to encourage cooperate over isolation, but it might be a misguided idea.  

It seems from reading the many great posts here that the community is divided on many issues that have both been presented in this looming update and some issues that have persisted from the start of this project. While I can appreciate NQ trying to save money whilst improving game play/smoothness they (NQ) also need to pay attention to what the community that makes up the game is saying about how the current state of the game is and what will happen going forward. The points I see from reading these comments:
 
1. Talent points - complete refund or partial refund = They said its all or nothing on this issue so take a snap shot of your setup so you can easily get back to where your particular set up is too easy.
2. Full wipe now or later at release - The community is really split on this issues I feel from the comments, my perspective as an 8 month or so player don't wipe there are literal works of art that took many hours of game play to build or code that was written. Now the code is saved and they have mentioned that you would get a "magic BP". Don't wipe don't destroy what players spent years building for the actions of a few. 
3. In ground Mining - I have been playing games and MMOs my whole life on and off I am 47, I will like most play what interests me even if there is a grind to it at first or through out hard work or effort with greater or equal payoff. There is no other way to say it we live in an instant gratification society and this too is split with some wanting this and some rolling up their sleeves. I feel players are missing the forest for the trees on this issue, with some very upset that in ground mining is being taken away while others are happy to see auto mining so they can either focus on building/creating or industry etc. I welcome the auto mining for those reasons will there be pain in the markets at first yes. I think over time this will become better. 
4. NQ not listening to the players - I think they (NQ) do listen to an extent but at the end of the day will make choices that benefit the company over what will benefit the majority/minority within the game. Should they listen absolutely they should take all relevant information before making decision in to account. Doing this will have a positive impact on not only the community but the game as a whole. 
 
Speaking from experience knee jerk reactions, puffed up chests, and keyboard warriors do nothing but add fuel to an already blazing fire and cause more harm than good. NQ should listen to the community take it all in and have those comments/suggestions have an impact on what is decided as a path forward. 
 
At the end of the day are you going to make everyone happy no matter which direction you choose to go NO never someone will always have a different opinion about how things should be done.  That being said there are some really wicked smart people in this space and have created literal works of art or a genius piece of code within the game.
 
I remember the last Q&A that NQ did on Oct 4th, Pann said at around the 11:15 mark she said go to the forums, I know people don't like them but that's where your voice will be heard, sorry NQ to use your words against you but if you want players in the game and not the same 5 people (being facetious) then listen to your words and listen to this community and weigh all the options.
 
Do more Q&A videos on these issues and this looming update, allow more time to find those game breaking bugs in the PTS, test test test and then test again before just pushing content to the live server.

I believe Entropy said and I am paraphrasing here but; "If you don't have money in your account to pay the taxes then bad things will happen". This to me suggests they will (like the government) just take it from your account to pay the taxes unless there is no quanta there.

It seems from reading the many great posts here that the community is divided on many issues that have both been presented in this looming update and some issues that have persisted from the start of this project. While I can appreciate NQ trying to save money whilst improving game play/smoothness they (NQ) also need to pay attention to what the community that makes up the game is saying about how the current state of the game is and what will happen going forward. The points I see from reading these comments:
 
1. Talent points - complete refund or partial refund = They said its all or nothing on this issue so take a snap shot of your setup so you can easily get back to where your particular set up is too easy.
2. Full wipe now or later at release - The community is really split on this issues I feel from the comments, my perspective as an 8 month or so player don't wipe there are literal works of art that took many hours of game play to build or code that was written. Now the code is saved and they have mentioned that you would get a "magic BP". Don't wipe don't destroy what players spent years building for the actions of a few. 
3. In ground Mining - I have been playing games and MMOs my whole life on and off I am 47, I will like most play what interests me even if there is a grind to it at first or through out hard work or effort with greater or equal payoff. There is no other way to say it we live in an instant gratification society and this too is split with some wanting this and some rolling up their sleeves. I feel players are missing the forest for the trees on this issue, with some very upset that in ground mining is being taken away while others are happy to see auto mining so they can either focus on building/creating or industry etc. I welcome the auto mining for those reasons will there be pain in the markets at first yes. I think over time this will become better. 
4. NQ not listening to the players - I think they (NQ) do listen to an extent but at the end of the day will make choices that benefit the company over what will benefit the majority/minority within the game. Should they listen absolutely they should take all relevant information before making decision in to account. Doing this will have a positive impact on not only the community but the game as a whole. 
 
Speaking from experience knee jerk reactions, puffed up chests, and keyboard warriors do nothing but add fuel to an already blazing fire and cause more harm than good. NQ should listen to the community take it all in and have those comments/suggestions have an impact on what is decided as a path forward. 
 
At the end of the day are you going to make everyone happy no matter which direction you choose to go NO never someone will always have a different opinion about how things should be done.  That being said there are some really wicked smart people in this space and have created literal works of art or a genius piece of code within the game.
 
I remember the last Q&A that NQ did on Oct 4th, Pann said at around the 11:15 mark she said go to the forums, I know people don't like them but that's where your voice will be heard, sorry NQ to use your words against you but if you want players in the game and not the same 5 people (being facetious) then listen to your words and listen to this community and weigh all the options.
 
Do more Q&A videos on these issues and this looming update, allow more time to find those game breaking bugs in the PTS, test test test and then test again before just pushing content to the live server.

PTS server.
/respec 
 
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

Thank the beta Gods! I've been waiting for this change since I started playin pre alpha... I'll finally actually recommend this game to friends! No more wasted life role-playing as a mining slave! I've been recommending these exact changes from the beginning, and am so excited to see how this shapes the future of the game... We've needed automated mining the whole time, so we don't have to be so darn attached to our creations, that we can actually start having some fun with them! I've wanted to get into PVP for literally years now, and finally will feel like I can take some chances that won't end up with my toiling back in the damn mines..

It seems from reading the many great posts here that the community is divided on many issues that have both been presented in this looming update and some issues that have persisted from the start of this project. While I can appreciate NQ trying to save money whilst improving game play/smoothness they (NQ) also need to pay attention to what the community that makes up the game is saying about how the current state of the game is and what will happen going forward. The points I see from reading these comments:
 
1. Talent points - complete refund or partial refund = They said its all or nothing on this issue so take a snap shot of your setup so you can easily get back to where your particular set up is too easy.
2. Full wipe now or later at release - The community is really split on this issues I feel from the comments, my perspective as an 8 month or so player don't wipe there are literal works of art that took many hours of game play to build or code that was written. Now the code is saved and they have mentioned that you would get a "magic BP". Don't wipe don't destroy what players spent years building for the actions of a few. 
3. In ground Mining - I have been playing games and MMOs my whole life on and off I am 47, I will like most play what interests me even if there is a grind to it at first or through out hard work or effort with greater or equal payoff. There is no other way to say it we live in an instant gratification society and this too is split with some wanting this and some rolling up their sleeves. I feel players are missing the forest for the trees on this issue, with some very upset that in ground mining is being taken away while others are happy to see auto mining so they can either focus on building/creating or industry etc. I welcome the auto mining for those reasons will there be pain in the markets at first yes. I think over time this will become better. 
4. NQ not listening to the players - I think they (NQ) do listen to an extent but at the end of the day will make choices that benefit the company over what will benefit the majority/minority within the game. Should they listen absolutely they should take all relevant information before making decision in to account. Doing this will have a positive impact on not only the community but the game as a whole. 
 
Speaking from experience knee jerk reactions, puffed up chests, and keyboard warriors do nothing but add fuel to an already blazing fire and cause more harm than good. NQ should listen to the community take it all in and have those comments/suggestions have an impact on what is decided as a path forward. 
 
At the end of the day are you going to make everyone happy no matter which direction you choose to go NO never someone will always have a different opinion about how things should be done.  That being said there are some really wicked smart people in this space and have created literal works of art or a genius piece of code within the game.
 
I remember the last Q&A that NQ did on Oct 4th, Pann said at around the 11:15 mark she said go to the forums, I know people don't like them but that's where your voice will be heard, sorry NQ to use your words against you but if you want players in the game and not the same 5 people (being facetious) then listen to your words and listen to this community and weigh all the options.
 
Do more Q&A videos on these issues and this looming update, allow more time to find those game breaking bugs in the PTS, test test test and then test again before just pushing content to the live server.

In the video you can see that each of your territories has a wallet that the fees will be withdrawn from. If there's no quanta in the account, then it goes through the different stages of non-payment.

So, to answer the other person's question, it does look like you'll be able to prepay some amount of your territory's fees.

Full Wipe today? That would be foolish and counter productive. Learn by the bad choices made in beta and make the game and in-game economy sustainable then decide what level of pre-release wipe is required for best possible launch? Definitely.