Duragon

Polls showed numbers.
 
Ridiculously low numbers.
 
They showed how many people participated in the polls.
 
Those numbers were 2 digit numbers.
 
I would also try to hide that.

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)
2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......

So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

Unhappy as well..

The need to login every day to recalibrate my mining units is making me question whether I finally give the game up.. I was hoping they would relieve the boring part of the game, in order for us to be able to focus on building the exciting parts, but since the update, every time I log on, I play the same mini game 6-9 times, and then question what I'm doing with my life and free time. I really think the answer, to my problem with the update at least, is to shift the timeframe we need to recalibrate things from a daily chore to weekly or bi-weekly chore. The thought of needing to login every day to play the same mini-game is killing my desire to anything else in the game.

Get ready for my rant.... 3.. 2.. 1..
 
Hi there, I am wondering if the community has changed.
From artistic builders to people who only want to make money or destroy things.
 
I see a lot of chatting going around, it only is about how much money you can make with the new mining units. Nobody talks about a building project or anything. New players come into this game and I only see them chat about how to make quanta. Its all about which tile brings in the most quanta, not even if it has a great view, a nice river or anything. They might as well just have flat surface planets because people dont seem to care. I have NEVER seen anyone chat about how this unlimited ore can help you with your giant build project.
 
Its all about quanta, quanta, quanta. People who are making billions, and for what, retirement?
This is a voxelbuilding game with superior voxel-tools and lots of players are only talking about how to make quanta.
And what will they do with all that quanta? Nobody knows
With all this unlimited free ore, sanct should be looking like coresant in a few months, but Im sure that will not be the case. People will only sell ore, it is not meant for building anymore. 
 
Talking about making money so much, that NQ is even considering a wipe now, and lots of peeps are like: no biggie, as long as i can keep my bp's (and with bp's, they mean a bp for a hauler to make money). NQ can consider a wipe, because the majority dont seem to care about builds.
In that perspective, NQ was right to implement taxes. If that is what the majority of the community wants to do (make money), then NQ has given those players a purpose.
 
And this is a voxelBUILDING game, so whats this complaining about PVP? Why do people enter a building game, only wanting to destroy things?
Because it is not about building or design, its about assembling the most powerful destroyer possible. Not even the best looking or anything, just to be useful and destroy as much possible.
 
And that is, for me, the reason I cancelled my sub. Not just because of how demeter or NQ changed the game, but also because I do not feel at home between these money grabbers and destroyers. This is just not my kind of game anymore. Im sure that if I come back and take a peek after 8 months or so, there are less builds then there are now! And thats a very amazing trick that NQ has pulled of in a persistent voxelbuilding universe!!
 
No offence to anyone, we are all different people.
 
 

Please explain your vision for how new and casual players and solo builders should be able to find an enjoyable game loop with Demeter.

I have decided to close my account as the recent changes have just been too much for me to continue.  I made some cool things and the concept was fun but it seriously needs some work for it to succeed.  Who knows maybe I'll try again if the game ever officially releases but until then fly safe o7.
 
And to the new owner of my Rorqual whomever you are, Enjoy.  

I guess they will make that decision when they are close to release.  If they have a large playerbase who is paying lots of money they will probably not wipe ( I acknowledge its unlikely).  However if the player base is small.  Then they might well go for a full wipe.  New players and players who started but never came back might get in knowing that the game is fixed and its a new start.  We probably cant unbreak the egg but I think most of us know the game is in Alpha and really my subscription is a donation.

My biggest fear was that this would be a chore. I hate chores. Mining was something I wanted to do. 
 
When I was broke, I could take things into my hand and go mine. Now I have to babysit this system and plan ahead. I hate it.
 
If I wanted to babysit and waste all of my free time just to maybe have something cool to look at in the end, I would invest in a salt water fish tank. At least with a salt water fish tank visitors to the house would be impressed... No one likes it when they come over, and I try to show them the ships on my computer...

Thx NQ, really appreciate all the small balance changes you did to the demeter Update.
- HQ Tiles: Great Idea! this helps us keep a lot of the player made content outside of sanc
- Wiping the scan results: Absolutly the right decision!

Kinda split on removing old scan data seeing as how it was mentioned that folks would be keeping them in the recent Q/A video. Yeah it will be another land rush and all, I just wonder how many people won't be participating this time around.
 
I'm all for it but man, these last minute changes are killing us.
 
Also...
I'm not good at math, but do you mean two mining units? 50+50=100, I'm not sure where 'four' is coming from. Maybe yall are working with 50% efficiency?

Good move clearing old scans!

But even with unlimited funds, I seem to remember someone saying there is a limit to how much tax you can pay ahead of time?.
So you are still unable to leave the game for some extended time period.
 
So NQ is basically holding your content hostage and saying you better play the game, or else there might be some "accident" you know.. nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

.

Its actualy most problematic conflict of DU disign.
 
There is still very hardcrore part of players, who play A LOT (some 24/7 basicly), have sometimes up to several dozen alts, also made fortunes on early NQ mistakes or outright exploiting (exploit-aquired capitals still bulk of some big pockets). They filthy rich, have everything and pretty much invulnerable to any balancing, while obviously gladly rape game overall and economy especialy, if allowed (NQ kinda trying meekly limit them, but mosly failing). 
 
And there is more casual, with less free time or competitive mood crowd, who want to fool around, build etc, without running some economic empires. They not rich and, in contrary, vulnerable to all sorts of limits, taxes and assorted NQ shennegians (0.23 as best example how deadly "innovations" can be for this strata of players). They, as real life poor, usualy on recieving end.
 
NQ kinda in impasse to "balance" these two categories of players.
 
 

NQ: We want your feedback!

Players:  Ore yields are too low, taxes too high. Here are several different ways to make this update viable. 

NQ: PTS Open again! With no changes to anything players were worried about not being changed.

I mean, I have to give credit where credit is due, they are freaking experts at just ignoring feedback and pushing things anyways. 

Enjoy my stuff... you and the other 8 players left should have a wonderful time with it for the time the game has left.  Too few players don't pay the bills at NQ.  This game was on borrowed time as it was.

Ah, DU, the game that advertised that you could "build anything" and "be anyone". 
 
Can't build big factories, it takes a ton of schematics -- not worth the grind 
Can't build factory ships, because...
Can't build cities, because money (even though they talked about cities and claimed their tech was "cutting edge") 
Can't have massive battles -- if you try too often, they'll probably implement time dilation lol (because this is the nature of single shard, NQ wasn't being 'innovative', they just didn't understand the tech or its limits) 
Can't own a hex without paying a government that has no law or lore or NPCs
Can't even design a ship without them changing how elements work this late into a supposed "beta" -- doesn't bother me that much, but they've had 7+ years, people, they could have figured out how brakes work by now. 
Can't do territory war, who knows when that'll be a thing
Can't do AvA, maybe ever, who knows 
 
To be fair, DU still has some of the best building tools -- among my favorite things is simply flying around and seeing what other people have made. Even that might start to vanish as taxes kick in. NQ still has time to balance it, but no one knows if they will because they never bother to communicate.

Again, if people don’t want too run missions they will not. People will cut back on territories to lower costs, persevere through to continue doing what they enjoy or get fed up and disappear. Others will just let them run down to abandonment.
 
You make it sound like 1 mil per week will collapse the economy when people have been spending cash on schematics over the last year costing 100’s millions per shopping trip.
 
As many mega factories have most schematics needed now there is lots of spare change so people who focus on industry and markets etc this will not hurt at all. 
 
The player base who has had no desire to make big money or play the economy and just wanted to mine for themselves to build what they wanted along with the casual players are the ones in danger here. The patch runs a big risk for them to join the pvp community in the DU history books. 

DU differs from EVE in one very important aspect. DU is/was supposed to be a persistent universe with unlimited terraforming and building.
 
And as such, there need to be some mechanism for solo players and small orgs to be able to step away from the game for some time, and NOT lose all the work they have put into building permanent bases etc.
 
As I see it, this is just another chapter in the build vs destroy balance problem, where a PvP'er can destroy in minutes something it took months for a builder to make. I.e the PvP'er wins by default, and the builders leave the game.

Ok, that's it. If this goes live then I am out.
 
I have been hanging around but not really played actively for a long time now, waiting for NQ to make a game that is fun to play again.
But if NQ is this far removed from reality, then there is no reason to wait around any more because the ship is no longer sinking but well and truly sunk.
 
 

Ok, usually i am not negative but the balance of Demeter on the PTS server has some severe problems.
 
1. Territory costs of 1m per week:
this will lead to almost nobody claiming any tiles any more outside of the sanc moon unless the territory can produce some serious income. so all "player made content" will disappear after some time
 
2. Scanning results do not get deleted and show l/h for mining units
this will lead to ALL really valuable tiles being claimed within the first 24h after demeter goes live, as it is really easy to identify  the most powerful tiles for mining units if you have containers full with scanner results.
so after day 1, the fun is over and the "mega tiles" will be claimed by those players/orgs that have all the existing scans.
 
NQ, as demeter is balanced on the PTS, it would kill the game if it goes to the live server
 
- New players some days later would not have a chance to find income opportunities despite missions.
- earning quanta will be a lot harder, so people would stop spending.. this would kill industrialists workflow.
- the imbalance between experienced players/orgs and new players would get worse and even more players would demand a wipe or simply not enjoy the game

please reconsider your decisions.

Hagbard.


 

This is worse that r0.23 and schematics.
 
Schemas are pain only once.
 
This Territory Taxation stress newer ends.
 
 

Who am I paying taxes to?
 
This abstract Aphellia entity, which also collects market taxes and already makes huge sums of money that way?
What do I get from Aphellia for this generous donation of 1M per tile per week? 
 
The privilege of magically being protected from looters to take away my hard earned assets? 
I already expected this when territory warfare was rumoured, but it just doesn't seem to come.
 
So what am I paying for exactly?
The entire Lore of DU is about settlers colonising new worlds and tailor their own fate. There is no "state" that I bought the territory from. It was new, unclaimed land. If anything, I should be the one that collects taxes to my tenants (If I manage to find some anyway).
 
And if you really think that Aphellia or "the state" can and should do this - Then give us ability to overthrow this greedy bastard, because apart from collecting money from us by selling us schematics, charging territory and market taxes and God knows what else in the future, Aphellia is just in the way of progress.
 
I've been living in this universe since Alpha, and I was really enthusiastic about the game. I understand that progress should come at some price. But from my perspective I already paid the price by investing insane amount of time in mind-crushingly boring mining (thank god for mining units), doing logistics to transfer the ore, selling on maket, etc - all that so that I can finally start doing what I came here for - construct a cool starship, and go and explore the universe.
 
Stepping out of my DU character and looking it from a casual gamer experience:
NQ, you made so much effort in slowing down the game (schematics, and now taxes)- up to a point of grinding halt.
 
DU no longer feels like a getaway form a real-life grind. Instead, it now feels like a prison where you are taunted with a promise that you can do anything that you want, only to be blocked with an overwhelming amount of grind that's in the way of your dream.
 
Being a software developer myself I know that you sometimes need to make compromises in order to deliver in a timely manner, but Demeter as-is is not acceptable.
 
Cut down the taxes to a symbolic amount, get rid of Atmo brakes tweak, and then we can continue to fight to live another day.

My opinion about the update:
I like the idea, but not exactly how it's done.
 
The main issue I have with this: The Taxes are far too high for people who are more interested in planetary building. The average Tile on Alioth gives you about ~500l/h, so ~84kl/week and most of this is T1
Even with talents it may be 150kl/week (not exactly, but just for demonstration). This is an amount you can currently get in 1h mining. And you have to sell at least ~1/2 to pay the taxes. The amount you'll receive in the end is way less than what you can get now if you are ready to invest some time.
 
If you are someone who likes to fly to other planets and build a base there this may be okay. I've heard about tiles with 300l/h T3 ore and more, so the taxes would not be an issue. But players who like the planetary building on alioth and not space travelling, will be extremely slowed down and I think this will cause more frustration in the playerbase.

There should be no brakes AT ALL.
 
We are 10.000 years in the future. We have Anti-gravity, Warp and Teleportation technology, yet somehow we still need engine walls burning fuel and gazillions of "brakes"?
 
We could use a small anti-gravity generator for braking and some electromagnetic engines or such for propulsion both in the atmosphere and in space.
 
But why do sci-fi in a sci-fi game? Instead, for an L-Core we need engine walls with 200 Large Engines, 500 wings per ship,  379 vertical boosters, 498 large atmo brakes and 392 retro rockets. Yay ...