Duragon

I am more fascinated by how every one of those "revolutionary future tech" web3 portal tech demo/game sites, manage to look like it is some type of early year 2000 style game or CGI from The Lawnmower Man movie.

So the cost of DU is not really CPU cycles but CloudFront - DU uses Cloudfront to push out all the voxel data. Any construct or terrain change you make is stored in cloudfront and pushed out to other clients as needed and then stored as cache by your client, at least till the cache is invalidated. Just how much data is pushed is easily tracked by checking your cache size folder. For the estimated costs it's pretty easy - https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/
 
You can confirm this easily by the way - 
 
 
Keep in mind that NQ likely has a contract with AWS that is for negotiated pricing, it's pretty rare for any significant users to just pay the list price.
 
That's why mining had to go and that's why constructs have to get destroyed if not tied to a paid account - else they are forever sent out to other clients and NQ pays for it.
 
Tracking millions of autominers is just a bunch of rows in a table - it's not a significant cost really. 
 
As to why NQ made the AM timer 24 hours instead for 20h like the "daily" timers in many games - it's because they have a consistent history of failure to learn from the mistakes made by other games.
 
"Daily" timers being either set to a specific reset time or less than 24h to avoid the constant 'shift right' for the players has been standard practice for some time in other games.
 
I had previously posted a breakdown of what I estimated NQ to be paying for hosting and how many players they needed to cover their staffing costs with the profit assuming France average DEV costs + taxes - and that post got deleted and I took a 3m ban for it sooo uhh not doing that again - you're welcome to draw your own conclusions though...admittedly I did also state that you shouldn't buy into DU because of that data because well...uhh...DOA.

Chat actually worked in the 90s though.
 
Not disagreeing with you, just adding my frustration lol
 
I played Everquest back then, and you could create custom chat windows, send different types of messages to different windows.  Private messages would open in a popup window.  You could customize the text color so you could tell important messages from less important ones.  You could even send links to items in chat, so someone else could click the link and see the full description of the item.
 
It took them a few years to make all of those improvements.  But they recognized that allowing players to communicate with each other in the game, was vital.
 
When you see another player in DU it feels like you're on opposite sides of soundproof glass, and all you can do is wave at each other and hop around hoping to get their attention, so maybe they will switch to the right chat channel and possibly see what you are saying to them.
 
 

Let's set aside for a moment that wiping beta player constructs at launch was always unfair, given past commitments. NQ have now heaped insult on injury with a number of stealth nerfs at launch:
 
Alioth T2 Distribution: 
I did 80 territory scans on Alioth at a ~3 tile spacing and found zero T2. None at all. Zip. Nada. No T2 - after spending 3 days building the XL assembler and scanner. This is a broken gameplay loop. Combined with the removal of Malachite from Alioth, the stealth nerf of ore distribution on Alioth resulted in a week of wasted effort. Forcing effort with no payoff is not gameplay. 
 
If NQ had been transparent with us before launch, said they were going to nerf T2 on Alioth, I wouldn't have wasted that critical week. I would also have rebuilt my base before launch so the BP wasn't made of 500,000M3 of Copper. Now, to deploy my BP I have to swap copper for another honeycomb, and then go back and untangle where the new material has blended with the same material already in the BP. More rework, on top of the wasted time.
 
1000m Build Height: 
This was self-evidently dumb. By choosing a 1000m cap instead of 1128m, it's impossible to build a 1000m AGG pad without placing your foundation core at an exactly multiple of 128m (since you won't be able to place the top core if there is less than a 128m gap.) Even then, you can put nothing on your 1000m pad, no elements, no structure. And you have to either use smaller cores for your top layer (increasing server load) or build your base from the top core, down - which means tall temporary scaffold structures first to place top cores and work back down - while others complain about griefing the entire time. 
 
A large number of pre-launch bases had AGG pads at or slightly above 1000m. All these pre-launch base BPs are now bricked.
 
This misstep demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of their game's own mechanics by devs, and poor understandng of players. To make matters worse, the change wasn't even included in patch notes. The only place it was mentioned - just wks before launch - was in 'Ask Aphelia #12. Few players had any opportunity to fix their builds before launch. This mistake (1000m vs 1128m) would easily have been picked up if players had been warned.
 
In summary, not only did NQ reneg on prior commitments to honour our builds in their 'persistent' universe - the only compensation being retained blueprints - they went on to stealth nerf the BPs we kept. 
 
[EDIT: Because this rule is not yet being enforced, and it is still possible to place a core above 1000m, this will create even more pain for players uncertain or unaware of the rule - should NQ decide to delete structures after they are built. And for as long as the rule is unclear, it is impossible to safely place the foundations of a tall structure.]
 

 
Missing STUs for 'Contributors' (and Surface Natron):
By making Sanctuary the only place with surface natron near Alioth, Alpha contributors already had a significant advantage at launch - since natron is needed to make many popular elements: screens, lights etc.. NQ then messed up further, by jacking up the distribution of STUs meaning only some Contributors received them. ~10 days later, this still has not been fixed. This means a small number of players, purely by chance, have the only access to surface natron near Alioth.
 
HTML/SVG nerf and Indiscriminate LUA Changes: 
The disabling of HTML screens was long rumoured, but took so long to be done it appeared to have been abandoned. Waiting till launch to tell players all SVGs and HTML are also now bricked is also poor form and counter-productive. Because a large number of ship BPs from pre-launch contain screens using HTML, and virtually every factory monitoring set-up, any player flying these ships or running these factories, will now simply go to settings and re-enable HTML, to be able to play the game - undermining the point of the exercise to phase out HTML, and prolonging the inevitable pain and frustration when it is finally done. This pain is now unavoidable given the original misstep of building a new API with zero compatibility with HTML/SVG. (The new API should always have been implemented in a way to minimise the effort of reworking existing content for players - rather than forcing ground up rebuilds of all screens. Better still, existing content should ideally have been ported on behalf of players.)
 
Combine this with the frivolous renaming of a number of LUA cmds, additional rework has also been created for players to reimplement scripts written before launch - for no apparent reason. 
 
STILL No Static BP Placement Snapping!: 
We asked for this in the Alpha Trello 3 yrs ago. It was poorly implemented on day one - snapping new cores only. Hundreds of players have asked for it to be fixed for static BPs over the years. It never made sense that new cores snap into place, but static BPs work of a bizarre raycast that doesn't even align with the player camera and - annoyingly - nudges by 2 voxels instead of 1. This feature was already long overdue, but now made more critical since it is essential to redeploying any mult-core construct after the wipe. Finally... finally, it was coming! In the launch livestream it was promised for launch here, at timecode 35:38:
 
Instead, we now learn this was skipped, rendering all multi-core static construct blueprints useless. 
 
Summary:
 
- Forcing players to constantly rework their builds is not gameplay.
- Reworking existing content is a poor proxy for new gameplay loops.
- Player input is invaluable. 
- Last minute, uncommunicated changes rarely if ever have a positive outcome.  
 
The culture at NQ of disregarding the time and effort of players, and lack of consideration of impacts on our gameplay, is worrisome. More worrisome, is the tendency to continuously rework existing content - mechanics, terrain, boolean noise - rather than develop significant new features, many of these features requested years ago. NQ are still missing the winning strategy of successful 'player generated content' franchises like Minecraft, where the focus of the first several years was on adding new gameplay loops - as opposed to continuously reworking existing ones. Reworking existing content decays player satisfaction by forcing the constant rework of our own builds. And making changes by stealth only magnifies the problem.
 
Until this is understood, the future of this franchise is fraught. 

Patch 1.0.1 states "Fixed a potential exploit", was that exploit actual misused? Do you have a way to check that? And if it was misused, did you roll back the misuse?
 
Because during the last two years during beta, NQ has fixed exploits, but never the misuse that was done with them. That resulted in the economical mess in DU that required a complete wipe. If NQ doesn't roll back exploit misuses, we'll be at the same state in another two years (another wipe)... So that's why I find such info important.
 
Edit: Patch 1.0.3 states "Fixed an exploit.", that sounds like it was actually misused. So where the misuses rolled back as well here? What happened to the accounts that were exploiting?

No, they rolled out schematics 1.5 years ago.
 
This idea that they "don't have the time" to fix a core mechanic that they've apparently known was broken for over a year and a half is just silly. 
 
This argument that NQ is constantly out of time is completely nonsense...compared to any other studio of similar size, a year and a half to make a rudimentary, simple change like this would be unthinkable. 
 
They're out of time either because the game doesn't have solid engineering and every tiny little change therefore takes an eternity, or because they have so few people working on DU (NQ is very clear that DU isn't their only project) it only has the bare minimum of development resources. 
 
 
They really didn't "spend a lot of dev time" on this. They refactored it away without any intermediate changes. No one forced them to bury ore so deep, and they never tried less performance-demanding techniques (of which there are many). 
 
Again, this plays into their love of false dichotomy: "we had to remove ore because it required too much infra" as if the only two options are "unsustainable" or "auto-miner" -- and that's not the case. 
 
Besides, the way professionals make software is to design and test for scale before you're months away from release...especially as an MMO, it's really puzzling that NQ keeps saying they are out of time as if they had no opportunity in the last 6+ years to understand how their design would scale.  

Have I come to the wrong place? This says "discussion" thread...How can it be a meaningful discussion without input from NQ?

Don't you find it ironic that the only aspect of the game that is 100% player driven is the forum?

Please change this schematics mechanic!  I absolutely love this game and it has captured more of my attention than any other game.  But, I cannot bear to play it now.  I was literally sitting there wondering what to do as I am a solo player.  Can't mine to make money, just need to wait for the miners so nothing for me to do.  Can''t try to build ships because I have no money....need to wait for the miners.  Cannot start industry with little ore I DO have because I have to wait days for the schems!  I am literally paying a monthly subscription to watch my game play itself.......  I have to take a step away for a while and hope NQ sees our response to this and makes some changes.  This really breaks my heart!!!

Please, pretty please.. provide an offline codex or at least the scripting section. It's HTML anyway so should not be that hard ..
 
having to go in and out of the in game one is not very nice.

What is it with you guys and "PvP is too small and only visible at the edges"? PvP is the largest area in the game, so this small safe zone is hardly worth mentioning. 
The problem is not the size of the zone, but that there are too few interested PvP players. But that's not the fault of the PvE players.
What prevents PvPers from building up space bases in PvP and then simply defending them? That's right, you could lose them, which is why PvPers also prefer to build in the safe zone....
 

This game was fine as a sandbox building game, kind of a big empty LEGO world.
Lego builders dont need entertainment or gameplay, they just enjoy builds. Cities skylines players also just like builds, they like to just follow an npc and just look around.
Train-set builders also do nothing but to watch their builds.
I think this game would attract so many builders from every corner around the world, that it would always have enough ingame players, and maybe not too many at once as some would always take a break.
 
Too bad nq didn't focus on the building/trading part and give us more things to build and trade with.
They gave us a false start with unrealistic sized doors, couches and beds, 3 types of toilets, the most useless empty plantcase and no xs space fueltank. Also crazy core sizes which make no sense to me, why 63(127-255-511) voxels and not 64 (128-256-512)?
Instead of adding more types of wings, doors, cockpits, trees, npc elements (ive made these myself with voxels later on, even made them interactive with detection zones and transparent screens), nq cut down on builders. 
There is lua for ships on water, something nq should have implemented themselves. I know for sure people would start digging canals (because of the ugly random generated planet with puddles) and just sail on them for fun. Videos of ingame builds would flood the tube channels.
The builders needed more things to easily make quests so we could make more adventures, to aquire items to open doors in mazes and labyrinths. Now it was only possible in lua.
I think, that players would subscribe just to see the amazing world that has been build by players. 
 
Nq could have focused on building(what this game started with). Expanding the game with the lua-ideas, just like other games implemented mods from the community, and adding elements that have a proper function.
But nq focused on destroying. Pvp, limiting and wiping that is.
And now you are here, a full wipe (so no world) and a few players.
 
Pvp bashing by me:
Pvp in this game is the fugliest version of space combat i have ever seen, even space invaders is more dynamic, at least you can dodge in space invaders! Territory warfare in this game would be just as ugly, boring and untactical as spacewar in this game is. You cant hide behind an asteroid, so why would you be able to hide behind a hill?
Pvp in this state kicks out the creativity of building. 
Pvp in this game reminds me of those old atari 5600 games, where the box art was nowhere near the ingame screenshots or the gameplay.
Tactics do not exist in this game.
 
In the end, I am sure that this game had more potential for a sandbox building game, than a pvp game.
But hey, nq is trying to proof me wrong, so ill keep an eye out.
 
 
Edit after 5 likes:
Its about this game being fine after 0.23

Wont play again, so it doesnt affect me. Keep your Blueprints. 
But wipe everything else is not fair, this should be crystal clear. 
 
To prefer one playstyle over another is not good.
 
If fairness is really a goal, they should wipe everything or nothing. 
 
 

Of course they are. We're years ahead on talents than anyone who'd come to play at launch, who'd expect a fresh game (since, hey, the game just launched). A wiped game will give the impression of a fresh world to inhabit. And let's be realistic, it'll drive anyone with any competitive sense away to hear that they already missed out big time because they didn't spend money on this game years ago. There is no way anyone would be willing to pick up a freshly launched game when they hear that quite some players are 2 years ahead of them in trained talents.

If they don't wipe at all, then it's a different horse. They'd come into a game world they know is already inhabited and has been so for years. And with that comes the understanding that the players who comitted to inhabiting this world before them will also be vastly ahead in progress. That's kinda what we have now, any new player right now is well aware of all the players that came before them, that it enables them to buy all kinds of stuff on the market, because players trailblazed ahead to make buying everything possible.

With a wipe, we all start from scratch. Everyone needs everything for themselves or their orgs mainly. Everyone will be in the gold rush, everyone will be building. But with 2 years worth of talents on some of all the people digging through the dirt again, they will have a clear advantage that wont feel fair. We'll all be back in the dirt but us backers will be vastly overpowering the newbies and leave them in the dirt, and that will make it feel unfair to them

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!

All these posts about what people are doing in game... Most all of it sounds like work, chores, and grind. Anyone playing DU for fun or just out of the fear of loss if you did not play? 

So is this going to be another on of those podcast where you answer the easy fluff questions, and pretend the hard ones does not exist?

@SlaySomething  I have a crazy idea.. How about instead of having the ore automatically brought to the container, we have to search for it ourselves... Instead of the ore being generic to an entire hex, NQ could hide the ore deep underground and then players would have to dig and search for it... Then you could use some kind of special tool that transfers the ore to your container.
The ore should be difficult to find so we could use some kind of scanner or radar that tells us the distance... And a skilled miner could then triangulate the location of the ore by moving about and judging the distance.

And the world comes full circle.

*cough* Utopia Station *cough*

edit: For reference, Utopia Station is about 1SU from the centre of the safezone. We've been there for over a year. It would have been great if this was a player element that could be attached to existing, long-standing, trade outposts.

Full wipe please.

I don't know what you all are thinking, this game is no were near finished.  You are only giving us half a game and you all think that that is ok, WTF.

Its very difficult to read and understand as your post looks like one long sentence.
Could you edit your post with some spaces between some parts?

Hi Everyone, its been a while since I last played (since  a bit after the 0.23 debacle when schematics were introduced). Here is what I noticed.
 
1.  Population is dead.
      Very few people around - even massive spaceports with tens of thousands of hours of build time invested are abandoned.
 
2. Why?  Well the game hasn't been fun since the fall season of beta launch (introduction of schematics in 0.23).
 
    - I am  80% builder,  20% pvp.  For a game that refuses to have PvE, a critical mass of population is required. Its not happening.
    - PvP is about blowing stuff up. 
    - Everything is way too expensive in terms of my time and effort to blow it up.
   -  No point to building if I can't share it with anyone or use it to make cheap ships
 
 My recommendation:
 
   3.  don't worry about inflation. If there are too many ships around, then they will become cannon fodder and the game will become fun again.
 
   4.  don't worry about too many tiles per person. Right now if a person owns half a planet there is still room for growth.
        - lower the tile taxes so I don't spend so much my time feeding the tax machine
        -  the tax is making it not effective to mine on any but the most productive tiles
        - hunting for a workable tile is not the game I want to play --->  I want to blow stuff up, not spend endless hours waiting for my scanner to give results. Not fun.
        - you can make taxes on tiles adjustable
        - each planet has a tile claimed percentage, so use that number to set the tax per tile. Popular planets will be more expensive, tax-wise.
 
   5.   Taxes on a tile should be the same as the bonus for daily log-in. 
 
   6.  The Devs seem to want to shape the behavior of players to log in every few days.
        -  extend your expectations to the sweet spot of logging on once per week (on the weekends when we have time).

   7.  The maintenance on automated mining is too short. I want it automated so I don't have to log in constantly. Once a week is good and make it cheap so I can build lots of cheap ships to blow up.
       - I am not going to destroy my expensive Ferrari, but I would be willing to take my low cost beater design into war.
 
  8. The problem with schematics isn't the cost, its the explosion of logistics to manage the darned things. 
     - Don't require the schematic to be in the actual machine - pull it from a central library that I own so I don't have to constantly look to see where it is last time I used it. 
 
 9. Math:
     - Try to stay away from hard limits - they don't work well in dynamic systems. 
     - Use differently shaped opposing forces (for example : a linear curve minus an exponential curve will shape the sweet spot of something)
 
10. Don't worry about rich people.
    - They will either: 
       a) quit out of boredom
       b) become benevolent sponsors and help others to grow  
       c) become evil geniuses that others will have to group up on to take down (sounds like fun)

 
 Overall make it fun! 
      Devs have gotten too carried away with putting fixed limitations on players'  behavior.  Give the economy some freedom and use self-adjusting sinks.
     
     Too many ships? --> Encourage war, theft and vandalism.
     Not enough ships?    --> Encourage building with cheaper material production. (lower taxes, increase mine production)
     Too many owned tiles?  -->  Encourage fights between neighbors or pollutions that lower mining yields on densely packed areas.
     Not  enough owned tiles? --> Lower taxes and increase yields
     
    Too much griefing ?  --> Give escaping a bigger chance with a stealth burst,  ECM,  or lower detection distance (increase background detector noise)
    Not enough hunting ?  --> Increase radar detection radius (lower the local background radiation interference)


 
Finally - respond to these posts with actual thoughts - brainstorm with your customers, not just amongst yourselves - or you won't have any left.

 
 
 

As in the other thread i posed this question, but wanted to see more.  I know we are waiting on NQs new roadmap, but with what we currently have, why does this game need to be a single shard universe? What does it provide?  If i can't effect other peoples gameplay then whats the point?  There is no bonus for cities, or carrot on the stick.  I can create whatever I want on any planet safely, I can run missions free from anyone else in the safe zone to make more quanta.  I can run all my mining units free from any interference.  I can build without any regard from someone else.  I can even crash my ship into the planet going 30k speed and it wont die or explode, no one can take it.  I just use some scrap.  Sure i can buy blue prints from someone but that could be easily transferable even if people owned their own private servers they payed for.  So once again, where does having this a single shard universe come in and give us unique gameplay?  If you say building you are terribly wrong, as I can just look at someones screen shots of what they build.  Going to someones base doesnt add to it.  But if I really wanted to they would leave their server address so I could connect and go see, but thats not really gameplay is it.   Seems NQ wasted a huge ass portion of their 25mil + on servers costs when that single shard hasnt provided us with anything a server like Space Engineers could provide you.  

I dont have much quanta so I, like many others it seems have been selling ore.  I tried selling refined metals but they are even harder to sell.
There is a shortage of buyers so I have had to sell ore to buyers.  I decided it was time to do some math.
I have 4 hex currently producing T2 and T3 ore.
My estimated income per week is 12.5 mil less tax is 8.5 mil.  I'm not going to count calibration ore as it should roughly offset the MU that randomly turn themselves off.
After tax of 4 mil I'm left with 8.5 mil.  I have claimed a hex with a small amount of T4 and another with some T5 (currently HQ).
So, my next purchase will be a Rare MU for 23 mil.  So, thats 3 weeks away.  Income should then rise by 4.5 mil allowing for tax.  So total 13 mil.
My next purchase after that will be an Exotic MU .  Thats 64 mil.  So, another 5 weeks.
Then I'll be set.  So, this is based on current prices.  Mu prices might drop but so might ore prices.
 
The thing is.  I will not be purchasing anything from anybody (other than 2 MU) for the next 8 weeks at least.
If, many other players are like me, then, thats a long time with little economic activity.
Its also maybe going to be pretty boring, unfortunately.