Atomi7

Du is currently the least-optimized mobile game money can buy.

Du is currently the least-optimized mobile game money can buy.

This new schematic system is over-engineered, and over complicated. When the system you implement to fix a system is more complicated, more boring, and just yet another "click and wait" time sink, you may have not done a good job.
 
The only mechanic they can actually implement, is some variation of "click and wait". Nothing fun. Nothing compelling. Just click on something, and wait for something to happen.  That's all they have "added" to the game in quite a few patches.
 
Mining...  Click and wait.
PvP...  Click and wait. (from a list of available other ships to attack)
Industry...  Click and wait. (copy schematics, and wait. Then apply schematics, and...  Wait for it...  WAIT!  LOL.  I crack myself up    )
 
I am expecting building to become some form of clicking a shape, and waiting an extraordinary amount of time to have that shape appear. As long as it is from the approved list of shapes you can wait for. Yes, I am being silly at this point, but how long before this is in the realm of reality when it is the only thing that isn't just click and wait, and requires interactivity? Especially when everything else that was any form of interactive, is gone.

Summer approaches and with it comes Mercury, our next update to Dual Universe.

As Cyrille Fontaine, our Creative Director, mentioned in his letter, our focus is currently on polish, and Mercury is no exception. This update also brings new features such as The Alioth Exchange, better lighting to improve visuals, Summer DACs, and more.

Read on for an overview.
 
THE ALIOTH EXCHANGE

We’re about to deploy a new installation in the heart of Alioth where players can apply to build a display to advertise and sell their creations. Applications will be open to all players who want to advertise their ship shops, markets, Lua Scripts, organizations, voxel libraries, or anything else that they create.
More details about, ‘The Alioth Exchange,’ will be available in an upcoming dedicated post.
 

 Note: constructs featured are samples only.

CONTINUED GRAPHICAL UPGRADES
 
We’re tackling illumination, vegetation, and explosion visual effects with the Mercury Update. You’ll find that the game world will be more radiant and realistic with our new global illumination, vegetation asset fixes will improve the look of foliage in the game, and whether you’re fighting or simply crashing a ship, you can enjoy more vibrant explosions.
 

 
SUMMER DACs
 
We’re implementing a separate, test version of DACs, allowing every active player to invite a friend to try Dual Universe free for one month. 
These Summer DACs are separate from real DACs, and will not impact your accrued pool of DACs from crowdfunding packages when gifted. 
One Summer DAC will be given to every active player and can only be redeemed by new accounts not yet subscribed to the game. They will expire by the end of the summer if not used. Summer DACs should allow us to test our web-based DAC system before the game’s release while offering your friends a chance to try the game for free!

NOVEAN OVERVIEW

We're adding an in-game interface which provides an overview of your general account information and unlocked possessions. We’ll expand this feature moving forward, but in Mercury, you’ll be able to see your unlocked cosmetic skins in a dedicated tab.
 

 
LUA API
 
Our vision for Lua has evolved over the years and with the new directions we’ve taken, it’s become necessary to entirely revamp our Lua API. These changes will future-proof the API and make it better serve the game by improving and tidying the system. We’re starting this process in Mercury. 
 
Naturally, such a major change will come with an enormous changelog, but to give you a brief overview of what’s coming ahead, we’re going to:
 
Restructure the entire Lua API Prepare an object-oriented approach to be ready for future evolutions. Reduce the use of JSON in the API to favor the use of real Lua tables. Rely more on event-driven code to reduce player loops and server requests. Reduce the complexity and size of scripts Add some of the, ‘nice to have,’ features Add further points of interest to some elements such as the telemeter.  
To summarize, our goal with this update is to reset the API and prepare it for future evolutions. Rest assured that your codes will still work in Mercury and that we’ll give you ample time to adapt your creations.
 
TALENT POINT RESET

Every character will have their talent points refunded back to their pool with the Mercury Update. While we must perform this reset for technical reasons related to upgrading our systems, this is also an opportunity for players to refocus talents into different areas and try new ‘builds’, or to simply correct training away from unwanted talents.
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As always, we’ll publish a series of articles delving deeper into Mercury’s features, but for now, thank you for reading, Noveans! We’re excited to move forward with Mercury and are eager to hear your thoughts in this forum thread.
 
 

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

Hello, Noveans!
 
I’m Cyrille Fontaine, Creative Director here at Novaquark. These are exciting times and I wanted to give everyone an overview of our objectives and direction for Dual Universe.
 
 
A game like Dual Universe is a never ending labor of love and ongoing development, but there is a point when you just need to assess if it is ready for a release. After close to two years of testing and numerous major additions to the game, we have decided to prepare the game for launch.
 
Development of Dual Universe continues at full speed, and we’re spending the lion’s share of our focus right now on fixing bugs, stabilizing the game, improving our back-end systems, and overall continuing to polish the game.
 
We’re close to deploying a brand new feature that we expect will be a hub for creators and merchants alike to gather and present themselves to other players. It’ll be open to anyone who wishes to participate and advertise their shop, museum, service, or any other point of interest.
 
We’re also working hard to deliver our promises to our Kickstarter backers that supported us from the beginning. We’re searching for a new shipping partner to deliver the physical rewards as well as delivering the digital rewards through the major game updates of 2022. We’re also implementing an initial web-based version of DACs.
 
  Our team continues to analyze game data and read your feedback to focus our efforts on where we can be most effective, and this means that our plans can change with developments in the game, but looking to the future, I want to share some of what we currently have planned in upcoming content updates for Dual Universe.
 
Flotillas are a new feature we’re developing that will allow players to form temporary groups of constructs. These will help in identifying friend from foe, assuming your foes haven’t already infiltrated your squad. This will improve many different aspects of group play ranging from fleet engagements, running convoys, piracy, and more.
 
Another gameplay feature we’re looking to add is recycling, which would enable players to better manage their inventories by turning parts of broken or unwanted elements back into components.
 
We want to expand PvE with the goal of helping players bring the game-world to life and improving the story in which everyone experiences the game. The mission system is one area of focus for this goal in developing more complex, interconnected, and lore-oriented objectives. 
We’re also developing a power management system. A good way to consider how energy will work is to look at how construct maximum speeds have changed. Players must decide how to specialize each ship, and similarly, must make choices on how best to distribute power across their constructs.
 
We want to increase the quantity of discovered planets and moons as well as new aspects, biomes and gameplay opportunities, and to produce planetoids the size of big asteroids, much like the Thades belt rocks, but claimable as a territory.
 
One of the most resource-intensive features that we have to tackle is planetary warfare. It brings significant change to the game and, before we can achieve it, we have to bring PvP in general to a more mature state. We know that territory warfare is an important game system to many of you, so continue to help us improve PvP by engaging in fights to generate data for us to analyze and continue to improve the system.
 
There are also many other features that we are looking to improve or introduce in the future.
 
 
Now, let’s discuss the topic of a reset.
 
We have seen your many posts across Discord, our forums and social media. We’ve heard your frustration and know that many of you are waiting for a decision about whether or not we will reset. Let me assure you that no matter what we decide, you will not be reset back to square one. Of the different options we’ve been discussing in case of a reset, we are certain that you will keep your core blueprints, including blueprints owned by an organization that you lead. We are also looking into which other important parts of your game progress could be kept if we do reset.
 
Yes, the internal discussion about a possible reset does continue, and it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most significant decision we currently have to make for Dual Universe. We appreciate our players and your engagement with us, but I also want everyone to know that all of us here at Novaquark are eagerly awaiting the day we can share concrete news with you.
 
That is all for this message. Until next time, thank you for your attention, Noveans!
Please don't hesitate to provide your feedback here.
- Cyrille Fontaine (NQ-Kyrios)

NQ(unsolicited): Hey, we're thinking about deleting all your stuff.
Me: wha-
NQ: See ya next month!
 

Hi, can we have different colors on dynamic construct in PVP?

By priority order:
NQ Staff > Green (like actually)

Transponder match, not a NQ Staff > Blue

Transponder didn't match BUT pilot is in friendlist/orgs and not a NQ Staff > White

Transponder didn't match, not in friendlist/orgs and not a NQ Staff > Red


It's the first MMO where I can't clearly see my ennemies/allies, I take 2 minutes for color them on GIMP, with 5 minutes you can have a nice icon for sure.

Hello Noveans,
 
Many thanks to all of you who have been with us from our Kickstarter campaign. We appreciate your support and your patience and would like to update you on the status of the rewards you have been waiting for.

THE PHYSICAL KICKSTARTER REWARDS
 
Production on the Dual Universe figurines and the Collector Box is complete. However, there are two challenges in shipping them:
 
First, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the price of shipping has risen significantly. It has reached a point where sending the rewards would cost as much as producing them. We had hoped that these price rises would only be temporary, but we now know that they won’t decrease in the short to medium future. We’ve therefore taken the decision to absorb the increased cost and to move forward with shipping the physical rewards. The second challenge has come from our partner responsible for handling the shipping of the physical rewards. They’ve recently informed us that they won’t be able to complete the task. We are therefore searching for a new partner to take receipt of the physical rewards and to start shipping them to you as quickly as possible.     THE VIRTUAL KICKSTARTER REWARDS
 
Both the Kickstarter Founder Packs and the Supporter Packs will be released throughout the milestones of 2022 in Dual Universe. We’ll give you more concrete details on exactly when you can expect each part of those rewards packages to be released in the months ahead.

Your support and patience mean a lot to all of us at Novaquark, and the delivery of your Kickstarter rewards is one of our priorities. We thank you again for your support and will update you with more information as quickly as we can. 
 

@NQ-Nyota Can NQ pause territory tax & subscription fees so we can all take a break while you guys decide?
 
Thanks.

Riiight? I think this will hurt them more than is obvious right now. It makes building more convenient in a lot of ways, but overall it reduces the engagement of the game. 
 
Once you have some AMs set up, mining is basically a "watch the paint dry" feature. Just like slowboating. Just like training talents. Just like waiting for asteroids to spawn. 
 
When so many features in your game rely on waiting around doing nothing, that's just not a good design. 

If a wipe has to happen I'd like Megas back. Figure out something with resetting the underground geometry every x days unless the player designates that tile as HQ if so allow for a flag to not reset for those with underground bases. Thinking about doing it all again with asteroid mining or setting up a machine to mine then logging off for weeks until the game does what I considered the fun part... Just no. Guess I could run deliveries but that is also 90% watching the game play itself.
 
In fact had the current mining paradigm been implemented from the get-go I would never have found the game fun enough to play et-all. To rebuild everything with this system.. please no.
 
I know it wasn't for everyone but I enjoyed hunting Megas and pulling them out of the ground so much I would even clear a mega out then donate the ore to projects I liked. Thus allowing those creators to continue doing what they loved and all was well in DU. I still feel rudderless after that loss. This is your least fun implementation of mining and you want that to be the basis of a rebuild? I don't know what to say.

Your daily reminder that multiple NQ staff in multiple channels, verbally and in writing, said we would get 'magic blueprints' if they ever needed to do a wipe:
 

 
(1:30) the reason for a wipe would be "(there is) something that we need to fix and there is no other but to wipe to fix it. I don't see anything like that coming... it's something that would happen if we really had no choice..."
(4:45) "we're going to do everything we can so that we don't have to go through a wipe again"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOp9nDzkxpc
(58:26) "It would be a very bad thing to say 'sorry guys, restart from scratch.'" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai3Kk37ntgg
(15:53) "Everything you build is forever"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD00-V_LKog
(31:58) "Whatever you do after beta starts is going to stay in one way or another... You will get what we call for the moment 'magic blueprints'... blueprints with everything included in it so you will be able to respawn the things as soon as we restart the server. So we don't like to call it 'wipe'... The key thing is the beta is really the start... You can start to invest yourself in the game. We guarantee that you're not going to be losing everything at some point... the universe is blank again, and you have to start from scratch."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syku-NmSg4s&t=1918s

I just wanted to throw my two cents in. I have made money in the game by doing commission work. Someone wanted something made that they didn't want to do for themselves for whatever reason they may have had. I had to give these people DRM-free blueprints so that they could use the item I made in whatever way they wanted. If there is a wipe, and people are allowed to keep their blueprints, a player like myself will be at a severe disadvantage. People are not going to pay me again for something they will already have after the wipe.
 
I would not mind having to make these things again for them, it is not about that. It is that there would be no reason for it. And I understand their point of view (I have this thing already, why would I pay for it again?!?). So, I would have to hope that there is a large part of the new community that would be willing to pay for commission work, I will have to prove myself to them without having the resources/foundation to show my existing work, or I will have to do the things I don't like to do, which I was able to bypass before.
 
I already don't agree with a lot of the decisions made, and they almost all had a negative impact on my play style, or the things I wanted to build. The screen LUA changes will in essence break my idea of making cartoon ships with expressive eyes that moved and made several expressions. The HTML method, mainly the PNG abilities, allowed me to use gradients and morph objects from one thing to another on the screen. The new method overly complicates this type of animation and effects to make it extremely unappealing to a player like myself. The voxel complexity changes are really strange. The things that should be triggering it (Like the crazy fonts that I make, or other wild things I have done to voxels, and the many uses of "checkerboard" patterns I have all over my place) don't seem to trigger it. But, literally using one material, and only plain square voxels, to make two walls that meet in a corner, a roof and a floor, will light up at 75% complex MINIMUM. So, if making a literal room size box already sets me to 75%, that doesn't leave me any room to do much to it beyond that.
 
I don't want a full wipe, including blueprints, because I would not like to lose all the blueprints for my own things I have put several hours into making. Nor would I want it for anyone else. The reason I am bringing these subjects up is to show why I will probably (never say never) not return if there is a wipe. I don't like the current state of mining (Which is more of a chore every 3 days to click something and just stand around waiting.), so I will don't really want to have to do that to make money to even get to where I was.
 
This is not about the items I give out for free. Those were my choice to give out for free. I am specifically talking about hours and hours of build work I did in private, for others, that they paid me for. Just to clear up any confusion on that.
 
If there is a wipe, no matter which type of wipe it is...  Please don't wipe talent points. That is 100% a game killer to me.
 
Well, that's it for me. Just wanted you to at least hear a point of view I did not see represented.
 
Thanks for reading, if you did!
 
-Me.

I've been doing some thinking... If NQ does a full wipe, except talent points. Existing players would have a HUGE advantage! My main can perfectly produce most T1 (Basic) Elements and is getting close to perfectly building T2 (Uncommon) Elements, the same is true for Atmo and Space Fuel. Do some math and see how much of a difference that makes compared to a fresh player. That's not only an issue with quanta, but with resource consumption rate, and advancement rate. I can make stuff faster, be earlier done with a ship, get earlier to missioning, trading, mining, etc. Grab land earlier, start scanning tiles earlier, etc.
 
My main has almost perfect passive mining talents, my other three characters also have almost perfect passive mining talents (except the handling talents, need only one char for those). Not only do I get more per autominer, I also get a TON more mining charges per week. My secondary has perfect placement talents for vehicles, combine that with the perfect flying skills of my third and (almost) fourth char. That would mean I could lift a lot more, a lot faster, combine that with the limitations of the max speed in space, that is also a huge advantage over newbies.
 
That's why keeping the talent points is a bad idea if the objective is to equalize the difference between new and existing players...
 
But there's something you can't realistically block, the knowledge on how to do stuff effectively in DU, what you should look at, how, why, when, etc. The only way to counter this is to massively change the game on launch or just start blocking existing players. Keep in mind that the players and corps that where playing in Alpha had a HUGE advantage over us Beta starters, they became massive fast. For some reason people keep forgetting this...
 
The problem with this is, there is no solution, not even an imperfect solution. The cat is out of the bag.

Why is any different than any other MMO today, take Lost Ark, or EVE Online, Star Citizen just to name a few,  if you start one of those games today do they give a DAMN that your a NEW PLAYER I think NOT. And guess what there will be player that are bigger and better than you on day one. So this idea that getting into a game right now requires some magical wipe so we are all EQUAL is a stupid and unrealistic idea and not actually done in practice. 

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

Despite our recent efforts to expand and clear out Market 6, we are still getting reports about performance and clutter. We want to assure our players that we understand your frustration and are still working to find better permanent solutions. 
 
Meanwhile, we will be addressing clutter across Alioth this weekend. Our plan is as follows:
Dynamic constructs that have not had direct interaction with their owner over a set duration (currently 30 days*) will be hidden.  Constructs at the market that violate our rules,  Code of Conduct and EULA will be removed.
If your construct is hidden, you can unhide (recover) it by using the Fetch tool. To do this, right-click on it in the Construct list on your Map screen. Any constructs that you own, whether visible or hidden, will appear on this list.
 
Fetch functionality now works for organization-owned constructs as well. For hidden constructs that belong to your organization, your legates can retrieve them via that same functionality. 
 
Our customer support team is at the ready if you still need assistance recovering your constructs. Simply ping our Live Support staff in the in-game help chat with “@GM” or file a ticket on our support page and we will dispatch help right away!
 
Please note that this is intended only as a temporary measure to aid performance and improve your experience when visiting these areas. 
 
We look forward to seeing the results from these changes over the weekend.
 
May your frames be plenty.
 
 
*Duration may change based on our findings