Nosomu

At this point my patience with NQ is gone. I played for over a year and a half, then they talked about the wipe. I went into maintenance mode and only logged in once a week to calibrate and pay taxes. And then I began to dread logging in to do even that. The only thing that pushed me to continue was the remote chance that my hard work wouldn’t be deleted or stolen. I waited and waited for this company to decide whether or not they would wipe their game. And now I don’t care anymore. But I’ve learned a few things in all of this. 
 
NQ isn’t professional and doesn’t care about their player base. And I don’t believe this company deserves any more of my money. 

At this point my patience with NQ is gone. I played for over a year and a half, then they talked about the wipe. I went into maintenance mode and only logged in once a week to calibrate and pay taxes. And then I began to dread logging in to do even that. The only thing that pushed me to continue was the remote chance that my hard work wouldn’t be deleted or stolen. I waited and waited for this company to decide whether or not they would wipe their game. And now I don’t care anymore. But I’ve learned a few things in all of this. 
 
NQ isn’t professional and doesn’t care about their player base. And I don’t believe this company deserves any more of my money. 

Speaking to the “better chat system:”
A unified chat window with different colour codes for each sub-chat would be nice. For example, green for org chat(with org name in brackets), white for general, blue for admins, and orange for help. The only chats that may need a separate tab are LUA and combat. These two chats could be pop-out windows so the unified chat is still visible.
 
Other social systems I’d like to see implemented:
-Planetary governance
-Regional governance
-Hailing systems with VOIP
-Regional VOIP with the option to turn it off
-Fleet VOIP
-Org headquarters location in the org UI
-Player markets that are integrated into the market search
-In-game LUA repositories accessible through a UI. 
-A LUA market in-game that functions similarly to the current market system.
-Activity indicators when searching to join an org. If all members of an org are inactive for weeks then it should be hidden in the org application interface.
-An official alliance system which orgs can join.

Oh, forgot to point out, after last time we learnt that Entropy doesnt know there are no L wings, this time we learnt NQ was unaware players dont like memory leaks. I wonder what other things they dont do due to lack of player feedback.

Dear NQ,
All the bugs, we would actually rather have them fixed.
The server issues, desynch, ships teleporting back to where they were, we would actually like to have that fixed.
New bugs on the test server that people report, they actually report them because they do not want them to hit the real server.
The game hugging over 30GB of ram if you have them, we would rather have that fixed.
And there is a faint rumor, that some players may even would like to know what is going on with that wipe thing.
 
Hope that clears it up, now you know.
 

Translating Cyrille's Post:

#0 Cyrille: I’m Cyrille Fontaine, Creative Director here at Novaquark.
Translation: This is who I am, <insert credible title> Believe me when I say the following...

#1 Cyrille: 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.
Translation: We promised way beyond our capability to deliver, and have decided to shove a broken game out for release cause we need revenue.
 

#2 Cyrille: 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.
Translation: We 100% know our game is broken, expect months before you get new content.
 

#3 Cyrille: We’re close to deploying a brand new feature that we expect will be a hub for creators and merchants.
Translation: We are going to reskin the auction house terminals, and make them a player craftable asset you can place on your tile.
 
 
#4 Cyrille: We’re also working hard to deliver our promises to our Kickstarter backers that supported us from the beginning. 
Translation: Thanks for the money, we are obviously 4 years behind our delivery date.
 
 
#5 Cyrille: Our team continues to analyze game data and read your feedback to focus our efforts on where we can be most effective
Translation: We are reading your feedback and ignoring you, this will continue.
 

#6 Cyrille: Another gameplay feature we’re looking to add is recycling, which would enable ... turning parts of broken or unwanted elements back into components.
Translation: Our economy is broken, elements are worth less than their raw resources, here is a bandaid.
 

#7 Cyrille: The mission system is one area of focus for this goal in developing more complex, interconnected, and lore-oriented objectives. 
Translation: Our answer for PVE is more boring mission types which poorly reward players for their time.
 

#8 Cyrille: We’re also developing a power management system.... Players must decide how to specialize each ship
Translation: We are breaking your ships again, forcing major redesigns.... LULZ.
 

#9 Cyrille: We want to increase the quantity of discovered planets and moons... to produce planetoids the size of big asteroids,
Translation: Player population has fallen too much for multiple star systems as JC proposed, yet players are still too close for servers to handle the resource strain.


#10 Cyrille: 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.
Translation: We Know PVP sucks, Planet Warfare in 2030

OMG I am laughing so much I can't breath..  uhuhuhu.. you want..NQ.. to make a .. a.. roadmap.. with like. .decisions. and say things that are for sure.. and..and actually  follow it..!? I mean.. NQ..  stop! Your killing me!  stop!

Just my personal opinion, but not saying anything about the wipe is leaving paying customers in an uncertain situation that can quickly turn into disaffection to the game: this project has so much potential that I feel sad in seeing it wasted like this: NQ we deserve to know what your decision is now.
 
 

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

Noveans,
 
First, we wish to thank everyone for all of your feedback and questions about the topic Shedding Light on a Novaquark Internal Discussion.
 
We wanted to let everyone know that the internal discussions are still in process and currently ongoing with all of the pros and cons mentioned in the thread above. This is a big decision and we want to do what is right for Dual Universe, as well as our current and future players.
 
We have been reading all of your feedback and questions, and they have been extremely useful in our internal discussions. As soon as a decision is made, we will pass that information to you. We appreciate your patience and support as we continue to explore and investigate the best possibilities for Dual Universe. Thank you!
 
In addition, we will soon have information about the Kickstarter Rewards, as well as DACs to share, so please keep watch for that!
 
 

 
New Community Podcast 
 
We know that you have many questions about many Dual Universe topics on your mind. Next week, we will be starting a new podcast where we will be bringing your questions to our Novaquark team for answers. 
 
How does it work? Good question! 
 
If you have a question about Dual Universe (game mechanics, lua, FTUE - these are just some examples of topics to ask about), then head over to our Community Questions Submission Form and enter your question(s) there. Once submitted, just listen to the upcoming podcasts and your question may be included there. We look forward to hearing from you!
 

NQ when will we have an answer? It’s been over six weeks since the original post where you said you’d discuss the wipe - and AvA and DACs.
 
It has also been almost 3 weeks since you shared your internal discussions. 

I just warped to Teoma with a warp shuttle I’ve been using for months only to find that I don’t have enough cells to get home. NQ’s nerfs to element weights went overboard.

hi, here would be my question to NQ team:
You write: - A complete wipe (except blueprints) with solutions to allow old players to quickly rebuild their favorite constructs through various means.
 
This would favor only builders, the people who made industry and grind the quantas for schematics are not considered. This is an unfair advantage for master builders. Also people who have made advanced Lua scripts will be favored since they have local backups.
 
For me there are only two options, complete wipe including blueprints (where Lua scripters still have a big advantage) or no wipe.
 
One more note from me, I joined DU at the end of the alpha because I didn't want to play alphas anymore and where did I end up, in an alpha, I joined because they promised a persistent world. As an entrepreneur you should make final decisions and not hesitate, then the customers know where they stand.
 

I am more interested in what exactly this supposed team of game designers has been doing all this time. Whatever it is, it is not showing in the actual game.

I've been thinking about this a little more, and would like to discuss the "Legacy/New Server" (terrible name) in more detail, as I think it has the best overall chance of win/win/win for new players/old players/NQ launch needs. Apologies in advance for the potentially long post. I hope that some people read this.
 
The outline proposal (Helios + New Star Systems):
Create a new star system far from Helios where "new" (under whatever definition) players start fresh (under whatever definition). Old players can remain in Helios keeping all of their stuff (no wipe), or choose to "wipe" and start fresh in the new system. The systems remain unconnected (see below discussion) for a period of time (until the difference between wipe and no-wipe players is acceptably reduced), after which the systems are connected by the construction of "stargates" by players to enable between star system gameplay.
 
The Pros:
The obvious split between varying degrees of wipe/no-wipe in the current playerbase is circumvented. Players will choose which system they wish to play in, all players will be mostly happy, they will continue with their subscriptions and (more importantly) will act as ambassadors for the game in their communities in the lead up to Launch and beyond. New players (and fresh start old players) can join at Launch in an environment where they are not behind the existing players, markets are young, the "best" tiles are not taken, the "best" mining locations are not yet known nor occupied, and other players talents are also at low levels. For NQ this option represents the best opportunity to generate huge goodwill with the community (old and new), and bring in the largest combined number of players at Launch (which we all agree is critical). Combining the star systems at a later stage allows huge opportunity for in-game narratives, pulling the whole community in both star systems together to build the tech to join them. This should be hugely marketable externally, and be another opportunity to push for an influx of new players (e.g. at the 1 year post Launch mark) as the star systems are brought together. Constructing the stargates in game can be expensive and absorb large amounts of legacy quanta/materials, bringing the equity levels of players in each system closer together (which could be an explicit aim). Similarly, the time before the two systems are connected (1 year?) can be taken by NQ to properly develop and implement the finer details of multiple star systems within the game. I.e. the time pressure for NQ will be lessened. The Cons (as identifed by NQ):
Split community. From the above, this is temporary, but of course it is critical to keep the playerbase united until the systems are connected, and give them the ability to play together as a whole and with their friends. Community cohesion can be achieved by carefully selected (and well thought through) ways. Some possibilities (though I haven't fully thought these out yet) could be: "Global" community in-game chat (Discord is also always there.) NQ (or player) run events that can be equally undertaken by both groups. (Perhaps there could be friendly competitions between the two systems, reflected in the eventual rewards.) There is a lot of scope for community building and friendly system rivalry here. Potentially allowing VR travel between the two systems. Absolutely this needs serious thinking about to identify if there are clear loopholes/exploits here. But connecting the communities by VR allows for joint participation in Org and player group events (talent-free) that may otherwise be split across the systems. Technical implementation from NQ's perspective: Only NQ know the detail of this. But in principle, from an outside only view, "simply" creating a new system at a substantial distance away from Helios (it can have the same skybox star!) would achieve most aims, perhaps within the capability of NQ's current setup. (Yes there are some considerations, see below). Considerations: How to stop players gaming the system
Moving from Helios to the new system is one-way, irreversible. No transfer of funds between players/accounts in different systems. Orgs are an issue here as they could be used to circumvent this, but one solution is to have different balances/accounts for each system (possibly annoying to implement), or anchor each org to a specific system with no financial transfers to/from the org for members in the other system (obviously this gets removed once the systems are connected), or Orgs are system specific with no members from other systems (though this will have the greatest problems to resolve when the systems are joined, and it doesn't bring people to play together). Similarly no ability to interact with markets in the other system (even if VR-ing into the system). Will it be possible for players to slowboat between star systems? If so, this is something that will need to be looked at (as say old players could slowboat all of their stuff to the new system). Restricting between-system travel to the stargates would avoid this (raising the question of how). But if it is possible to slowboat, then you can bet that someone will try it. Pure distance between the systems (with it taking >1 year at max speed to make the crossing) is the simplest option. There are almost certainly some other things that I've overlooked. Important to implementation would be the ability to log player activity, so that if an exploit is found NQ are able to either roll back, or trace/identify/punish/ban the perpetrators. NQ needs this ability anyway, so it would be an investment. Summary:
For me this Launch option is perhaps the most ambitious (in that just resetting everything is certainly easier), but it has by far the biggest potential payoff in playerbase both in the short and longer term, which is critical for NQ. It also makes almost everyone happy (shock!) and potentially playing up to Launch. The costs are systems and tech that NQ need to build anyway, so little developer time will actually be wasted in the long term.
 
Thanks for reading (if you did).

If NQ is destroying all the work except core blueprints, wouldn't the people that spent their time making those core blueprint have a huge advantage over the rest? I'm not in favor of a wipe at all. But if you want to be consistent and wipe the wealth from players, that includes core blueprints. Time is quanta, and ready built objects that normally take time to build are worth a significant amount of quanta. So the person that spend a 100 hours mining gets shafted by loosing everything, the person that spend 100 hours building and making BPOs isn't? How is that fair?

How much WORK or EFFORT I have put into this game is irrelevant, and there are very few who can argue they have put in more time and effort into building then I have.

I have no expectation of work product, in this or any other game. Nor is there any legal right to it, in this or any other game. Games have run for years, only to shut down overnight with no warning. No expectation of compensation, no compensation will ever come.

 I have my knowledge, and if the Stroke I had in January didn't wipe that, then for sure NQ can't.
 
All I truly care about is that we hit the ground at release with solid:
1. Lore/Cannon for it all. Write a damn story to explain it.
2. A functional communication system. (long neglected and def NOT ready for release)
3. The ability to choose how much audio and visual "noise" we want the game to display. IE a functional UI with settings controls. (long neglected and def NOT ready for release)
4. A well thought out plan on how to start an economy, and how to adjust it when it goes out of wack (which it will)
5. A strong and robust set of game mechanics that are FUN to play, and prioritize those who want CONSTRUCT a civilization over those who what to hack, slay, and steal. 
 
give me that, and I'm willing to start over building shacks and scooters.

NQ please answer the question:
 
Will there be a wipe?

I too am disappointed with the space wreck system as it’s currently implemented. When I read about them in the dev blog, I was expecting frequent spawns that would open up a new salvaging loop. I also thought that they would be relatively lucrative wrecks that fairly compensated salvagers for their time (relative to the other game loops). However, I spent over 16 hours searching for wrecks after the patch dropped and didn’t find a single one. I was then told that space wrecks are something to be stumbled upon rather than actively searched for.
 
 I am very disappointed that this is the case and I have given up on looking for these wrecks until something changes.
 
Suggestions to make space wrecks more interestIng and enjoyable:
 
-Procedural spawns of the wrecks in the paths of transiting vessels at random time intervals (within, say, once every 1-2 hours).
-A specialized abandoned construct radar that has a passive range of 10+ SU.
-Exclusive elements that can only be found from salvaged wrecks (i.e. a new variant on existing elements or a new tier of elements that cannot be manufactured.
-Alternatively, exclusive schematics of these element variants.
-Unique ship spawns that have buffed attributes compared to what is normally available in the game world (i.e. lvl 6 equivalents of handling buffs)
-Or, just more frequent spawns that have a higher payout to match other activities in-game.

I think an easy fix is just to drop mission packages for interplanetary missions, entirely. Have Aphelia request large quantities of mid tier elements and ore be delivered to distant markets, prioritizing materials that are lowest or out of stock at each destination.
 
Payout/market listing will be based on cost to produce with no skills and a set amount per km travelled, with a higher per km payout the more you haul. Since risk is solely on the player, no collateral for these missions would be required.
 
This eliminates warp restrictions, instead making it a cost consideration. A “no warp” option could exist for a pay rate bonus, since you’re being careful with the cargo and slow boating. It also creates and fulfills a REAL demand for both warp cores and elements, opposed to making packages out of thin air.

This way, people running alts will have to either produce large amounts of different elements or buy them at the market, which creates industry demand either way. And since the missions are based on need, what is requested will always be changing - it will be harder to set up a single industry to haul and game the system.
 

Ships should die when they are killed. 

You’ve found the entrance to Wipelandia

You’ve found the entrance to Wipelandia

You’ve found the entrance to Wipelandia

It would be super fun if we could get mega nodes on asteroids. Make them rare but possible. The game loop of exploring for a mega was a super fun loop. Players really want the possibility to hit a huge score it keeps them engaged longer. Mega nodes where that in DU and some fun went with them. Mining a mega node over the week the asteroids is in game would bring this lost fun back.