Perry666

Why you want them to scare people away in ads ?

1) Immediately suspend all schematic purchases. Make the price for all of the schematics $0 and refund all schematic purchases. Set a vendor at each planets most popular market that will have all schematics and allow each person to grab as many as they want for 30 days. After 30 days schematics sales can resume on the market at much lower prices. Any schematics claimed by a person since .23 will have no resale value.

2) Send an e-mail out to every DU customer for the last year and inform them of such changes.

3) Completely revamp the entire new player experience. Include in this new experience more and better rewards for doing the tutorials, classic quest givers that show people how to mine underground and upgrade their speeder. Rewards can be anything from cosmetic skins for their territory claims or speeder, tool, extra quanta, ores, containers and industrial machines. Get this done in time for the holiday shopping season, ie the second week of November. 

4) Send an e-mail to every DU customer for the last year notifying them of such changes.

5) go on an advertising blitz to sell games for the holidays. Include in this blitz new promo videos that are REALISTIC AND ACTUAL GAMEPLAY, not some fanciful stuff that is no where near completion.

6) Re-monetize your game for the holiday season. Sell the game for $9.99 U.S. with a one month subscription included. Add more options, especially a monthly option to subscription plans. Add various subscription plans that include bonuses such as ships, skins, quanta and pets for extra money tied to the game in the form of longer subscriptions or a higher base price. open a cash shop that is STRICKLY PAY FOR FUN. In this shop can be pets, skins, quanta and various other items.

7) Provided all goes well and subscribers and game sales increase a fair amount provide a roadmap for 2022 that schedules major updates every three months which shall include the many things that the player base has been asking for.

This list is not at all comprehensive. I keep hearing how this game has so much potential, but potential isn't the only thing that a game needs to survive and thrive, and one of those things is listening to and acting on what the people playing the game want and need.

I just spent 30 minutes googling NQ and DU. Just about all of he news is from 2019 at the latest. Now, I'm old and dumb and don't know shit about fuck but old news and no news in this day and age is never a good thing.

Please help support your DU content creators on you tube, twitch and whatever other platform you see fit. Give em a like, a follow a subscription if you can. The more people creating content for the game the better chance DU has of attracting new players. New players means more money for NQ Which will hopefully trickle down to us in faster, better and more updates for the game. Think big picture friends.

That is my hope too @Perry666

In the "JC years", NQ has mostly overpromised, painted a much rosier picture than reality and lost a _lot_ of time (I'd say at least 1, probably closer to 2 years) and wasted resources chasing the unattainable promised and goals JC set. Now that JC is gone and we see the first real signs of a more attainable, manageable and achievable set of goals, I for one would be willing to give NQ another chance to show they mean business this time.
 
If they deliver only on what the latest roadmap shows then yes, that would not be good as it would mean progress is way to slow. If they over-deliver and bring us more than what they set out to do then there is hope for a recovery as I see it. Their abysmal track record so far has very much polarized their community and the responses here certainly show that. I'd say, let them show they actually have the intent and purpose to now move on and deliver a game we can all enjoy.. It's another chance yes, and probably their last one but at least I'd say they should get this opportunity to show what they've got.
 

One of the first rules any business should learn is always under promise and over deliver. Never do the opposite. I'm hoping for some serious over delivery.

Now, before I start, I made a mention of this at the end of my post called "Quality of Life and beyond", however, to NQ directly: If able, I highly recommend employing 1 or more (coding) developers to permanently play test the game, and to fix any various bugs, and/or quality of life features thought up, because that would allow for better polish within the game for everyone, while also taking the least amount of time from the base development team. Additionally, just having some sort of board to post various small quality of life features internally from devs to devs, in case anyone has suggestions on such features and bug fixes, would also be highly productive.
 
UI changes
 
In build mode, the game doesn't really tell the player much about what elements are destroyed. It just says either "there are no elements damaged", or "there is at least 1 element damaged". The funny part about this, is there's literally LUA scripting that can detect damaged elements, and those specific elements (and their names) can be put on a screen, to tell the player what needs repairing. Of course, while this is great for LUA scripting, it is important to realize that the game cannot rely primarily on community made tools (unless you think Elite Dangerous is a perfectly designed game), and such, my suggestion is as follows:
 
Under the construct tab in the build helper, put a list of all damaged elements (if there is any). When they are double-clicked, highlight them (through everything) with a unique color that is distinct from the repairing tool's highlights (such as orange). This would persist when you get out of build mode, and would time out after a minute. Should the player start to repair the element damaged, it will persist till the element is fully repaired.
 
 
Another reference to my Quality of Life and beyond post, but better layout, and more dense information for item descriptions is sorely needed. Of course, you can find that post here. To build this, as well as upon other ideas under "Better Item/element descriptions", having better ways to judge element sizes without actually having to buy that element would be a great addition, for blueprinting, and visualizing ship builds. This of course can use pre-existing assets, with not too much effort (I hope?).

This feature would require its own tool most likely, named the "blueprint tool". Similar to the "element" tool, it allows players to place elements, but in this case, very differently. On the right side, where the selection for elements for placement occurs, a button above all of the elements in the list (named the "selection menu"), when opened will create an inventory-like menu which will house any and all elements that exist within the game (assuming polish exists), excludes elements that the player cannot access naturally. It would have a search function similar to a container menu, as well as filtering functions, and so on. The list would be alphabetical, to make it easier to find elements manually as well. Lastly, the right-click function would not work on any of the elements inside the menu, as well as any form of moving the elements around. All of their information (just like a container window) will appear on the right side of the inventory panel.
 
When it comes to actually using these items, it functions very similarly to the element placement tool. Firstly, you select elements the same way you select them with the element tool, however, of course only using the "element selection", menu, or (hypothetically), dragging elements into the bar as well from the player's inventory. When placing the element (with the same criteria as normal), instead of the actual element placing, a hologram-highlight would appear, in either light blue, or yellow. This hologram would only appear in build mode, and the player cannot collide with it either. Lastly, it of course would not be right clickable, and would be ignored with right-click. Lastly, alt-clicking the element with either the element tool, OR, the blueprint tool in hand would remove the hologram.
 
In markets, simple changes such as improvements to how linked containers interact with the market container UI, as well as simple changes such as removing the "instant buy" and "instant sell" buttons when there is no stock, as well as creating more search filters, such as "has stock at X market", or "tier X", etc. would also be great. Additionally, improvements to how items can be selected and moved (select multiple, and drag), as well as being able to select multiple items, and then click "move to inventory" and have all items move, instead of just that slot.
 
Finally, for the search function itself in all uses and forms, a better algorithm to include the sub-strings that match, not only just the search input string, would be greatly appreciated to find items that you don't know the precise name of, especially considering just how inconsistent the naming scheme is. In this, also having tags associated with item types, such as "Thruster" for all engines, or "alloy" to search for all alloys, etc. would make searching a lot easier and quicker.
 
Ship piloting improvements
 
Moving on to the default UI (and controlling) for construct controllers (cockpits, really), major improvements to both the UI, and functionality, would be a great idea. Of course, DU prides itself on community-made tools, and scripts, however, a development team should not sacrifice good quality of life for that "quirk". Additionally, a feature change would also allow the developers to clean up the LUA functions themselves, which is also a good thing.
 
 
To the first suggestion, major changes to the way that omni-directional thrust works would be a great idea for ships that use this feature. At the moment, the movement is very lack-luster, with literally just hover function included to make the ship float against gravity, and literally the rest is the same compared to normal throttle-design. There is no auto-dampening, such as many other games, and there is no "tap w to move forward slightly", like games such as Empyrion, and Space Engineers, which, while having more basic flight models, can be credited for it being very intuitive and smooth. The current version of this is nothing like this, and has a mish-mash of that feature, in every direction but forward and backward, but for those directions, uses throttle for acceleration. This of course ruins the primary perk of omni-directional thrust, which is the fine tuned aspect of piloting. Additionally, smaller features like having keybinds for specific throttle amounts would also be great to see.
 
To change both of these issues, I suggest the following. First, for auto-dampeners, have a button that auto-toggles between 3 different modes (identical to Empyrion, btw). No dampening, gravity-dampening, and full dampening. These different modes are self explanatory, just observe the mechanics in those games.
For the actual movement changes, to counteract the issue of not having a throttle slider, having a key bind once again that locks the current state of acceleration from the thrusters would be the solution here. To clarify acceleration, I mean what the thrusters are currently doing/outputting. changing any movement manually would cancel this, as well as pressing the button again. 
 
If you wanted to get more fancy with these two features, to make them not clash, having a distinction between what the dampeners are doing, compared to what the player has inputted would be my solution to this. The auto-dampeners would work separately to the thruster-lock, and in this would allow the ship to still stay airborne without constant adjustment.
 
 
Moving onto the UI itself (assuming that the features above have indicators within the UI), decluttering the different UI boxes to be more clean, and take up less of the screen would be preferable. Currently, when attaching a weapon of some form to a flight seat, the amount of UI that it introduces clutters the screen so bad, that in my experience makes it nearly unusable for piloting. I do not have a suggestion really to fix this, however, the issue is still persistent, and bugs me greatly. 

Secondly, there is literally a scroll bar for a cockpit that uses mouse wheel for the throttle. Due to this, the information hidden by this is lost due to this issue. 

 
Additionally, some tiny improvements to fuel tanks within the piloting UI, adding a number to indicate the fraction of fuel compared to the total would be helpful for fuel usage calculations on the fly. An example as simple as this would suffice in my opinion.

 
Tank relays/Tank hubs
I'm sure this feature has been suggested basically everywhere, but the amount of flexibility this feature would provide for ship designs makes it a great suggestion for this post. My take on this is as follows. Similar to a container hub, it connects tanks. While this is cool and all, there are 3 different types of tanks in the game, of which are not compatible. In this, my suggestion to solve this is to color code a tank hub (change its coloration of the texture itself) when it connects to a type of tank. Light-blue for Nitron, yellow for Kergon, and white for Xeron. While a type is active, when attempting to connect a tank of different type to it, an error message will appear, stating that different tank types cannot connect to a tank hub at once. Lastly, when there are no connections to the tank hub, it reverts to the original state (and texture).
 
Gameplay Balance
 
While at this rate you could probably claim I'm sponsored by Empyrion Galactic Survival or something, I just really like the game. In this, a lot of survival-oriented features in that game I find quite compatible and important for this game to exhibit in some manner as well. Starting with the biggest issue in my opinion, ore distribution and the tech tree.
 
Currently, limestone and malachite are only present on the same body on Alioth, where they are used to craft tier 2 components. This issue with this is the following: You cannot craft tier 2 components without a static core, and therefore by extension a territory unit, which that territory unit requires tier 2 components. Due to this, it is physically IMPOSSIBLE to start from scratch on any celestial body in the star system in almost any manner, therefore breaking a core gameplay pillar (in my opinion) of any progression-based game, something Empyrion (for example) does incredibly well. In that game, you can get to the end game in almost any situation from scratch (no matter if it's extremely difficult), due to the nature of the progression. 
 
To fix this major issue, excluding of course the need for Malachite and Limestone to exist on all celestial bodies (in my opinion), allowing territory units to be crafted using tier 1 components, AND in a nanocrafter I see as a necessity for this game. Of course, it would have to be highly expensive in that regard, and additionally take a long time to craft (example being 6-12 hours).
 
 
Switching to a similar topic, brought up in the previous feature mention, a change of ore distribution and planet revamp is sorely in need. While of course a planet revamp is not a quality of life feature that is simple to answer (and solve), the ore distribution, which of course requires a planet revamp, is highly important to the current progression of the game. Without good level design, a game will most likely suffer for that issue. I do plan on making a post about the planet revamp though, so ill link it here when it happens. Anyways.

Take this situation: Currently, you can get stranded on a moon. These moons do not exhibit atmosphere, and a lot of them do not contain tier 2 ore either. Due to this issue, it is physically impossible to progress without a market, and to even move a ship starting with no fuel. Because of this chicken and egg issue, the player physically cannot get off of a celestial body without any tier 2's, due to space engines (and technically rocket engines) being impossible to fuel without them, and being required to move in space properly.
 
Funnily enough, the player can craft space engines (and tanks) in their nanocrafter, but of course cannot fuel them, making that feature quite questionable.
 
 
Lastly, any major changes to progression can be linked here. This post is about player movement, as well as ship diversity, engineering, and piloting.
 
 
This post will be updated over time, and in that, any major changes will have a call-back post which will link back to this page. Thanks for reading!

Thanks for the input guys!
 

Thanks for the input guys!
 

A Supernova wiping the solar system ?
jokes aside. I like your idea and even only new planets would be great, nebulas, asteroid fields and so on sth. In the universe to make it worth traveling. But I ll think of sth wilder still.

1. shesplaining Queens
2. people that speak ill of the great President Porco 
3. Madis (because they eat their own children)
4. whiners who can't dock right 

There are lots of ships for sale on https://du-creators.org/  with comments from people who have already bought the ships.  
 
But it's always better not to trust anyone, if you don't have to.  Always use the Barter/trade window, and make sure you're getting what you're paying for, before you hit Accept.
 
 
 
 

Porcocorp! 

Of course there is SLI/MTI with BlindingBright's own Hammerhead and Tomahawk ships.  Come see our city at Madis Market 3.

There’s a thread of “top four best things in DU” and community is pretty much #1 on many people’s list. 
 
those still left are devout supporters of the game and want it to succeed, for sure. 

I agree, I also found the community engaged and helpful. Without them getting into the game would have been much harder.

Yeah.. New players are like fabled unicorns in this game. So everybody is treating them like royalty.
And despite all the game problems, community is the one thing that seems to be good with quality over quantity winning the day.

DU's in-game economy has been stagnant ever since the beginning of early access and is only continuing to recede as we lose more and more players over time! Why is that the case? You cannot support production without consumption mechanics! In a consumption-driven economy, money (coming from an external source) needs to be injected into the domestic market in which it will end up in the hands of consumers who will spend those money to support the local industries. The economic growth is dependent on consumption! If the consumption remains weak, it does not matter how much money they have in hand (and how much this eased), if they will not spend (because of lack of consumption mechanics in the game), there won't be much trading going on and therefore the lack of activity! The difference between this game and real-life is you don't need much in this game to get through! The game is 100% player-driven, with no progression, with lack of consumption mechanics. This explains why the activity in this game is as such! People have no expectation because there is no goal! The economy has no engine at all! If the game is designed to be minimalistic, there is only one way to play the game and that is to play it as a minimalist. You got too much items in this game that don't break down; you can literally provide for yourself without needing to trade; and there is not even any goal in this game but to continue to acquire more things that you don't need. What happens when you already get to the top of the mountain? You are discontent! So add more content for me to continue to have expectations! And you got to do something about our declining confidence in the economic system such as the exploits, free quantas, the bots, etc.! Not only is the economy stagnant and receding, it is also broken to the point that it already collapsed!  

And what are you gonna do with so many constructs and private lands (tiles) that were left behind by people who left this game? They have to be adversely possessed by scavengers and squatters! You cannot leave them the way they are! This is a major problem that is turning off current players and will turn off new players! 

Received a lot of help from the community today. A mysterious gentlemen by the name of ViperX somehow gifted me three million quanta.(I have no idea how it happened, cause, well, I'm dumb) It hit my bank account so hard my game crashed. Another gentlemanly scholar by the name of ArtVandelay gifted me a jazzed up f7 skirmisher. That will help a lot sir, thank you.

Deepest regards for both of you fellows. I hope some day I may be able to repay you.

Received a lot of help from the community today. A mysterious gentlemen by the name of ViperX somehow gifted me three million quanta.(I have no idea how it happened, cause, well, I'm dumb) It hit my bank account so hard my game crashed. Another gentlemanly scholar by the name of ArtVandelay gifted me a jazzed up f7 skirmisher. That will help a lot sir, thank you.

Deepest regards for both of you fellows. I hope some day I may be able to repay you.

Received a lot of help from the community today. A mysterious gentlemen by the name of ViperX somehow gifted me three million quanta.(I have no idea how it happened, cause, well, I'm dumb) It hit my bank account so hard my game crashed. Another gentlemanly scholar by the name of ArtVandelay gifted me a jazzed up f7 skirmisher. That will help a lot sir, thank you.

Deepest regards for both of you fellows. I hope some day I may be able to repay you.

So do i.
But we, alpha ppl, have seen this movie too many times before...

It's like seeing a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme and expect him to not kick someone in the face.

@DekkarTV
Im talking of near zero exploration content + very high stakes + unbalanced game giving exponential advantage to older players that translates into pain with no reward. 
And why will the mainstream MMO player pay a subscription to experience pain... 
 
@Perry666
Ppl like dekkar are part of the problem. 
 
During the alpha stage some of us explained in a very detailed way why some parts of JC's vision were flawed. 
 
I personally commented, in more than 10 seperate occasions how it was impossible for mmo players to build a civilisation without some basic enforced guidelines, like EVE security zones and NPC missions. 
 
But when 1 of us explained a problem, 3 guys like dekkar totally destroyed our threads.. 
From, 1 of them, counter argument with very unlikely exceptions and the other 2 agreeing with him. 
Passing by the old: "you dont understand the vision" 
And sometimes ending in personal accusations or offenses to make sure the topic would be locked. 
 
JC, with his huge ego, failed think about the problems we were presenting. 
 
For many years, ppl conplained about "pending operations" but in my head, that was never a real problem. Because solving the "pending operations" issue was a technical challenge that was 100% solvable, just needing time. (i even created a major thread about UDP and suggested NQ to buy some already established protocol+api instead of trying to invent it. Coincidently a few weeks later NQ changed the protocol to minecraft proto) 
 
The real problem was the hostility of the game to new and lone players. 
 
The current model of players do everything allied with the average type of MMO player creates a universe between anarchy and ruthless dictatorship. 
 
With the time investment needed to have a ship and the very high chances of total loss when going outside of the pvp free zone, this game is just a massive maker of pain. 
 
 
 

I really really really want to like this game and play it all of the time. it has so much potential. But what is preventing me from liking it a lot is a multitude of things.

1) The game is very very confusing. Sand box idea, i love it, i get it, its great but just because it's a sandbox doesn't mean we can have more direction. For example: I took a shuttle from sanctuary to alioth, It took me roughly 30 minutes to find out where the shuttle is, why? CAUSE THERE'S NO SIGNS! Now, when i got dropped off on alioth i was just dumped in the middle of some massive station, no other shuttles around, no signs no sense of any direction. You know what i did? Got frustrated and logged off. Even the tutorials need a lot of polish. I think I played the building one five times or more. make the maps interactive, there's a lot of work that can be done there. Show active populations, have a heat map where battles might be taking place, something! Put more descriptions on things. Oh and make the beginning hover speeders faster, they should go double the speed. Going from my tile to the market is straight ass.

2) The game is very laggy. I think it may be because there's hundred of ships and tiles with little tiny piece of industry all over the place. Solution: introduce a decay system; after 30 days if your ship, factory, whatever is not rendered a decay timer activates and you have ten days to render your good or they go *poof* and your tile is forfeited.

3) Increase mining capabilities drastically, including early game surface mining. Make it much much easier and faster to dig and find seems of veins. Increase vein size and number. I've been playing video games for over 40 years (Yes, I'm old) In my experience the vast majority of the gaming community hates farming. The player base for this game will not grow if the farming continues to be as horrendous as it is. If the mining is easier, then ship building will become easier and then more people can get out in the world and pvp or whatever and the world will come alive. Not many people at all want to spend an hour digging around chasing a coal seem.

4) make the game a little more exciting / dangerous. Idk, give us some npc's to fight, or allow us to schedule tile defense from npc's. this would be a big project, we would need hand weapons and turrets to set up for base defense. Who doesn't love a good base defense? even if its from some raggedy npc's. I've spent idk how many hours already running around picking up rocks; BORING!

Again, i really really want to love this game tell my friends all about it, hell I'd even buy a few of them subscriptions' but i just can't. the game need so much more work before i can do any of that. I want to say more but this post is long enough. if you read it, thank you. i wish the best for this game.