UnscriptedVert

Just to let you know, you are the reason I started to play this game. You have deeper insight then most of the people I have seen comment on this forum. And I would hate to see you go, but I do understand what you are trying to say.
 
Of everyone here, and from a newbie's point of view, whom has lurked this forum for a while now, you are the one I respect the most.
 
Live Long my friend.
o7

I have suggested NPCs a few times in a few posts. But I always get the responses from players "NPCs will NEVER be a thing".
 
Well maybe it should be do to the growing number of bored PVP players.
 
@ NQ Staff.

This +1

Finally, someone who understands the real problem here. And to add to this, the reason people come and go, is because of the old timers who are not saying anything constructive to help the devs, they are basically being toxic players that run off the new players. I have seen a lot of new players come and go, and their reason ? Toxic Players. It has become a vicious circle.

We need constructive criticism to work with the devs. IF those with an agenda hate the game, I quote what I saw a few other players say  " move on ".

I have suggested NPCs a few times in a few posts. But I always get the responses from players "NPCs will NEVER be a thing".
 
Well maybe it should be do to the growing number of bored PVP players.
 
@ NQ Staff.

I am disappointed that the Devs still haven't realized that no NPCs = No game. Many Devs have tried and all have failed. I am aware that every development team has a vision they want to make a reality, however, the greater reality is simple; "Do you want to make money or not?" 
NQ has this backwards as they are trying to make the player do the grunt work of an NPC. PvP will never be a reality if players have to worry about making a living in a game. You are making us peasants and frankly, why in the world would I pay my hard earned money to spend hours digging a hole in the dirt just to make ends meet? Why even bother with DU? I could get the same exact results playing any one of the dozens of games that fall for the same trap. We need to move past the peasant player mentality and move forward into automation. My NPCs do the work for me so I can plan how to interact with fellow players in terms of economy, peace, and warfare. I say this with the hopes that I don't get crucified for my views. I say this because I have invested my hard earned money into the game and I want it to succeed. All in All, we are tired of doing grunt work which should be automated and given to NPCs while players can actually log in and manage their wealth and relationships with other players and NPC factions. 

There is a warp problem? I'm serious here, what is the problem with Warp?
 
If you mean that warp endpoints are currently in safezones which will be removed once Planet side PVP starts, how is that a problem? 

Even suggesting that new players should stay quiet is absurd IMO. As I see it _ESPECIALLY_ new players should speak up as they have a new perspective on the game and how it plays and are more likely to point out shortfalls that more tenured players who will assume understanding and knowledge too often miss or step over.
 
 
In all honestly it is a lot of the more tenured players who make the silly suggestions because they wear their personal preference glasses and seem to not actually read and understand the information NQ gives us, even when that information is minimal and often vague and between the lines.
 
Yes, it would be good to have the mission system active but it is not hard to deduct from what NQ is telling us that they have bigger fish to fry right now and until these issue get resolved they can't fix some of the issues and push new features in a reliable way. That is IMO rather clear from what they are saying even when the actual words are vague and laced with marketing/PR spins. Try reading between the lines and maybe try and accept that some of us here do have the ability to read and interpret the garbled messages NQ is sending out, at least to some degree.
 
 
It amazes me that on discussion thread about NQ posts outlining their struggle and mistakes, several just go and rehash their wish list completely ignoring the context of what NQ is saying. The company is in trouble, they are working on but have not completed their efforts to find a way out and until they do, screaming "BUT.. BUT MA PEEVEEPEE" and the mission system will not have any effect, if not an adverse one. 
 
NQ needs time to sort out their shit (excuse my French here but I'm trying to make a point).. let's focus on them doing that and allow time for that before you insert your personal pet peeves into the conversation as unless they do sort this out, there will not be a game to implement anything you are looking for.
 
 

Everyone here has paid to be in this game one way or another and they have the right to offer feedback, post suggestions and join in on ANY conversation they like.  It is simply not your place to tell them otherwise.

On one hand, i get where you're coming from...
 
But on the other...NQ will benefit from understanding how the new player UX is broken. It's one of their bigger problems.
 
Yes, they need mid/end game. Yes, their update pace needs to greatly increase and 0.24 was a sad, sad thing. 
 
But there's still a big percent of players that pay for a sub and don't play for more than a day. There's little point in mid/end game content if people churn in a few hours! 
 
NQ does need the perspective of noobs, too. 
 
NQ's devs are professionals (don't laugh, I mean this is their job). They are adults. They are fully capable of taking responsibility for their own dev decisions and understanding the context of feedback. 
 
No player feedback should ever be taken at face value, anyway. 
 
There's still no indication that NQ's actual dev team so much as glances at feedback, anyway...so i wouldn't be too worried about them getting distracted because of some random new player suggestion...no time is being wasted because there's no time being invested in reviewing feedback...

What an arrogant post, new players may very well have foolish requests, no more or less than more established players with a clear agenda, equally they may have valuable insights into the new player experience which we have long since forgotten; they've invested time in it let them post what they want, it is up to NQ to decide what is useful and what is lunacy, if they can't even do that then this isn't THE problem.

All opinions are welcome. As has been pointed out, sometimes a new player's vision or the early game play, or understanding of the game in general, etc. There are always lots of angles   So, while I appreciate the sentiment to what you are saying, it doesn't help us design any better to only look at one segment of player. 

A lot of you guys have been asking for NPC enemies in space to fight against. I see why you would want that added, but in my opinion they won't be worth the dev time. Here are some counter arguments:
 
Novaquarks intentions with the game is to have a "common, shared virtual world, controlled by the players." Adding a second party of aliens / other humans breaks this rule. Unlike in EvE, movement is (relatively) much slower, which means that escaping danger is a lot harder, especially if you don't have much thrust. That may be good for PvP lovers, but could be an unescapable death sentence for unlucky haulers, which brings me to my next point: Having enemies scattered in space further encourages players to warp to their destination, making pirating (and counter-pirating) even harder since there will be nobody to fight. Even if NPC's are restricted to certain areas like asteroids will be, most haulers would rather warp than risk bumping into one and dying. With the way that PvP works, NPC's would have to match the damage of L cores if they want to have a chance against them, meaning that <L cores will have a hard time fighting , if they don't just simply die in one shot. The cost of running, fueling, and repairing L core constructs can cost in the millions, and so unless every NPC is carrying 10kl of gold nuggets or something it will be a net loss trying to fight them, not to mention the 50-100 million paywall to get a good L core in the first place. Unless you are in a specialised org, you will be mining for many hours to get a good PvE ship in the first place, so what's the point?  
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

It's an arbitrary rule, though. The question isn't "does this break the rule", it's "why does the rule exist to begin with?" -- the world can be controlled by the players even with NPCs. The reason NPCs are a fairly popular suggestion is because NPCs fill a variety of important design concepts; concepts NQ hasn't created alternatives for. There's a reason most MMOs have them. 
 
This is more about how PvP is balanced in general than anything specific to NPCs, imo. I agree these points need work, but I also think they need work regardless of NPCs.

Personally I don't think NPCs should be randomly scattered in space if they do exist, but player built -- that would include NPC hauler convoys that would give pirates more targets.  
 
If all NPCs belong to an org, it would help tie together PvP, industry, building, and organizational politics. Sure you can pirate some NPC convoy, but it means making enemies with their owners. It's still very much players running the show. 

I think most people realize that NPCs aren't a small concept for NQ to tackle and it's unlikely they'll ever be implemented. But for most NPC concepts, they seem to add more than they take away. 

There are tons of MMOs either without (OPEN WORLD) PVP or where it plays a small part.  Consensual PVP with very limited death penalties is pretty much the norm these days, most people don't want to go back to the early days of WOW where there was true open world PVP.  Turns out getting randomly one-shotted by high level players wasn't all that popular.  And Games like ESO have a fenced in PVP zone.  Fallout 76 had to quickly nerf their PVP even with small instanced servers.  Sure they can keep safe zones but if they have resources exclusive to PVP, non-pvp players won't be happy, and if they don't then it is harder to make (open world) PVP worthwhile.  
 
Really they just need to pick a direction.  The player base and game design for Second Life is vastly different than say Rust and trying to squash the two together in a single game is gonna end poorly.  Creative, Social, PVE, and PVP can all be fun but they don't always play together well. 
 
And to your point,  they need to decide on their marketing strategy.  Long term niche players works for some games, like DDO.  Some games benefit from attracting from a larger pool even if they don't stay for years.  Catering to one often has consequences for the other.
 
 

Gordon Bennet, lad! You've been saying "done with this game" for over six months. Can I haz your stuff already? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. LOL.
I don't see the point of hanging around dissing something you don't like. Kind of feels like you're suffering from Stockholm syndrome... Just move on... There are other games out there... Life is short, etc. etc...

As a major crowdfunding supporter over the last decade or so, I got here just after the kickstarter and picked up one of the supporter packs.

I pretty much got what I expected. I really enjoyed the freedom and ability to shape my imagination in-game....  Much more so than Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, which I also backed and also have 1500 and 500 hours play time in respectively. The newtonian physics and the Lua programmable elements hooked me since the other two games have neither (No, ED doesn't have pure newtonian physics.... ED's physics is severely gimped (yaw, anyone?)  and their ships are stacks of kludges on top of kludges).
 
0.23 put a clamp on that for a few months, but four or so of our remaining active org mates restarted the factories and doubled down and they got NovaX pretty much back to where we had been a few months earlier (proof that schematics absolutely don't work as intended and are completely useless as implemented)... 

maybe 800 to 1000 hours of gameplay later, I still love flying around on the craft I made and designing new structures in game... but as the players left, the social aspect of the game sort of disappeared, which for me, was the main draw.

DU was is close to brilliance but has missed the target a few too many times for some players (like our tazerboy above).

This + 1

This is probably the best well thought out comment I have read.

Agreed ....
 
Nothing wrong with subscription based. Du charges 20 dollars for 3 months, meanwhile games like EVE is 15 dollars a month, and WURM Online charges just under 10 dollars per month.  USD ammounts of course. This makes DU as one of the cheapest out of all of them out there.
 
Bottom line, an online game won't last if it doesn't have a subscription. Otherwise how would the servers get paid for ?  Alhough, WoW was probably one of the best examples of a working DLC based MMO that was also subscription based that worked for years. Now days though, you can host your own server.
 
I will say this though, games that allow your own server, do well, but it depends on the game. DU might actually do better if the players hosted their own servers with MODs.

As other players have said, your starter planet is just that - your starter - get your feet on the ground and learn the basics. You'll need to travel to find higher tier ore's and most meganodes Happy exploring.. 

Oh.. and:

Honestly, NQ would need to work really hard to go FTP because micro-transactions require a carefully considered game design to balance properly.
 
It's important to have a great hook that invests the player and pulls them toward a MT -- right now, FTP players would follow the same pattern as paid beta subs. They'd stay long enough to litter their speeder somewhere. 
 
"Getting more players" isn't the only concern, it's keeping them. They got a lot of new players during beta's initial launch, but they couldn't retain them. Some paid for months or even a year and didn't play for more than a day or two. They'd rather throw away their money than keep trying; that says something about new player UX. 
 
If they went free-to-play tomorrow, they'd get many new players...but only to lose money and clutter the servers. There's nothing compelling new players to stick around -- this game's new player UX gets worse over time, not better. Their MT conversion rate would be abysmal -- they'd have players, but not revenue. 
 
DU doesn't actually need new players right now. It needs a solid new player UX and a way to retain those players. You can't monetize players (FTP or subs) if they can't get past the early stages of the game.

People have been putting quotes in games for over 3 decades that I can personally remember. ( Yes I'm old. )  This is the first time I have seen someone complain about it.
 
If you are asking to stop quoting famous people, then you need to tell all the ads on TV and Radio stations and Memes and... well the whole internet to all stop quoting people there too.
 
Botton line, there is nothing wrong with quoting famous people who actually said those things.

+ 1

NQ, I appriciate that you hadn't given up. Keep going.

Agreed ....
 
Nothing wrong with subscription based. Du charges 20 dollars for 3 months, meanwhile games like EVE is 15 dollars a month, and WURM Online charges just under 10 dollars per month.  USD ammounts of course. This makes DU as one of the cheapest out of all of them out there.
 
Bottom line, an online game won't last if it doesn't have a subscription. Otherwise how would the servers get paid for ?  Alhough, WoW was probably one of the best examples of a working DLC based MMO that was also subscription based that worked for years. Now days though, you can host your own server.
 
I will say this though, games that allow your own server, do well, but it depends on the game. DU might actually do better if the players hosted their own servers with MODs.

@aliensalmon I too played Second Life. I was even one of the official scripting teachers, with LL employees coming to my sessions. I still have my accounts from 2004.
 
It's off topic, but just had to put that out there.
 
 

I guess to start off, I didn't know it would really click with me because the game was primarily first person. I had a history of not being able to get into first-person games such as Goldeneye 007 and Elite Dangerous. However, this was balanced with my eagerness to find a good science fiction space MMO to call home. I was envisioning this game would let me explore the universe and encounter people and all sorts of things as well.
 
I also liked the concept because I was into Second Life, a sandbox virtual world that allows building. (I also found out about this game from a Second Life forum.) I also liked the somewhat vibrant colors - they seemed welcoming to me.
 
Despite it's faults I'm glad I played this game. I enjoyed my time in game and forums are entertaining as well. I am grateful for NovaQuark for this very unique experience they created.

I started playing this game back during NDR times. But quit, and am back with new account paid up for a year.
 
My first thoughts of this game was not only the building, but the initial idea of solo play, taking on the galaxy. I invisioned a bridge of my own design and creation, fully interactive with screens that I programmed in LUA ( yes I love LUA ), and having a ship that I built from mining my own ores, to creating the factories to build it, with an end result that I could be proud of.
 
And the different stations on the bridge be manned by other players.
 
Anything beyond that is bonus.