CousinSal

Sorry to say but i have seen space engeneer servers that are closer to the original DU vision as DU is itself, and those i did not invest a few hundred in. 
At the moment the server tech failed we got the first limitations and that has not stopped since. Simply said, we will never get the vision since it costs money and will not make money at this moment. It feels like any progress on server tech was halted and the fresh wind is called limitations we try to sell as game features to enhance something else!!Yoehoe!!!
 
So yes, i still believe in the vision but to be honest, the current approach of NQ does not walk that path, it follows a demolition derby strategy on route to lowest costs

With regard to the alpha/beta/release state of the game, I keep coming back to questioning where did all those dev hours go?
 
Despite what some people think, NQ cannot really be classified as a indie company when they have two office locations (Paris & Montreal in Canada) and had about 150 employees at one time (currently 76 employees according to linkedin). Meaning that regardless of how big a budget NQ may, or may not have there should have been lots of people working on the game for all those years.
 
So what features did the 6+ (8+ depending on how you count) years of development with that many employees go into? Even now all we have are like maybe 2 of the 6 pillars functioning, and the whole game is just layers of "early test with lots of bugs. But don't worry guys, we will improve it later" functions and no real game design.
 
I mean.. The game is supposed to be a community driven MMO, and it doesn't even have proper social/chat/voice/message functionality and a UI from early 2000.

sounds like a decent development with actual fun during Alpha, and calling a phase by its name is also amendable.
 
DU will be released with all changes currently going and what it already is as Alpha but they call it ready.
It is nowhere near ready or competitive towards other games in the genre. It could have been but, well bad choices and delay after delay
 

in 3 hrs you cannot do this much in DU

The failure with the population currently more than weak in the game is not to have implemented PvP at all.
 
With NQ's recent reactions, I think they've finally figured that out.
But it may be too late for the financing of the game.
 
It's now quite useless I think to yell at NQ to ask them for more complicated changes. The nerve of the industry is badly needed, maybe they also want to reduce the development of the players as much as possible to have time to really add content to the game post release.
 
==> I repeat myself, but clearly the lack of respect that there has been towards PvP players who have now waited 2 years to finally be able to play the game is the main cause of the drop in the number of players.
 
As an example for only speaks of the French-speaking side that I master:
- At the launch of the Beta I remember 14 active organizations (10 to 100 members)
- 3 totally PvE organizations
- 5 mixed PvP-PvE organizations (large organization 50/100 members and streamer organization)
- 8 TOTALLY PvP organizations
 
And I may be able to add one from EvE which ultimately never came because there was no real PvP.
 
You can imagine, 60 to 80% of theplayers in these organizations were there to do short or long term PvP on the game.
Some were expecting atmospheric PvP.
 
NQ to shit on all these people who finally left and left the game in this state of population.
 
=> The only chance for the game to work is to leave its safe zone on 3 planets. AND put everything else in PvP.
 
There is no more time anyway, if NQ survives the release, they will have 3 months maximum to create the PvP content and bring the real player population back to the game.
 
Otherwise it's dead
 

While I changed my earlier post on this there is an important thing I left out..
 
If you produce Warpcells "EVE style", you buy "Advanced Quantum Alignment Unit" and "Advanced Antimatter Cores" from another player through the market or a contract, to then add those to a machine that has the "Warp Cell" schematic inserted. You do not start with the raw materials at all, you do not run a complete production chain, and in that context the "X runs" schematics works perfectly fine.
 
NQ did not design Industry in DU that way though, it's more Factorio/Satisfactory, and so actually drives building complete chains from raw materials to end-product instead. And that is why the changes now proposed will not work in this context.
 
At the same time the above actually shows why the economy in DU does not work, it has nothing to do with players not wanting to use it, it is because the design of the game is such that it actually drives being independent from markets entirely, and that is valid for orgs especially. In EVE, players interacting, be it through markets or through contracting and even when doing so withing a company or alliance, is at the very core of how different mechanics are designed. It is far more efficient to buy sub-components from people who have specialized in these that trying to do it all.
 

And no, I am not saying NQ needs to turn DU into EVE here, I am saying NQ needs to stop trying to make DU do things in a way they did not design the core of the game to work. And these schematic changes are very much an attempt to do just that.

Oh God reminding me of my days in SWG. The customization was amazing.  Some were dancers, some jedi in robes, so regular people, some decked out in crazy armor.  They even had a cool appearance tab so that if you looted that rare pink chest plate you could still equip it for the bonus but then wear a regular shirt if you wanted to look a certain way.  Walking into the cantina on mos Eisley there would be 20+ people in their all unique looking yet still fitting the star wars style. Just amazing. 20 years later we all wearin a uniform to work for aphelia who just seems to be a decendant of Jeff bezo or Elon musk. Faceless nameless drones to grind out a sorry existence. 

Its obvious that neither side will win this conversation, and that NQ doesn't care about player input.

I have already made up my mind that these changes kill the game for me. There is nothing that is going to happen at this point, short of NQ not deploying the changes that will get me to continue playing, and supporting DU.

However since NQ is looking for ways to "Fix" stuff I think we should apply the same schematic fix to PVP.  Its easy.

1. All weapons now need a Charge to be able to fire. (Oh and they will still need ammunition)
2. you can buy a Charge from Aphelia so that you can make additional charges 
3. you have 5 slots to produce additional charges to apply to your weapons. (Small time and quanta investment will apply)

so that now it can cost millions of quanta to fire your weapons in PVP. This way you really need to think about if you should fire or not.  This should cut down on the amount of people engaging and PVP and solve the whole issue.

Granted I think this is the stupidest idea ever. Much like applying the exact same ideas to industry. But ask yourself if we as the player base stand by and say nothing at what point does the AFK timer BS stop. When will be able to just play the game in the sandbox we were promised and have a good time.
 

This is sadly a recurring theme. It is not what DU needs.

Those other players also wants to make warp cells to avoid the AFK-game of space flight between planets, not to mention the PvP folks who burn lots of cells iiuc. There just won't be enough WC schems to go around.

What an interesting way to introduce pay2win. More alt accounts = more schematic copying slots.

Really?!
I think this is the last straw!
How much notice will we have until you implement this?
 
Yep, if you implement this, I won't be paying any subs for this game and I'll take my alts with me.

DU had a chance with right chain of priorities from early stages of development.
 
Best shot was much more political-social game, where interaction of player-made entities were main thing. Like EVE with 1st person, even with all limitations and trade-offs.
 
Yet NQ chosen to make it some some sort of half-assed building/grinding/flying_for_long_time game. This unlikely have any long run chance to survive. Simply too little of semi-solo nerds interested in building some crap 1000 hours from voxels or play 2000 hours with industry sitting alone on empty planet. Its not even niche, its like deep hole in niche.
 

I’m just glad they’re using their resources for something that will improve the game. We can finally put that death-sequence debate to rest.
 

The initial premise was deeply flawed...an open world sandbox MMO where you can PvP and also make factories or create content via Lua...that's like 3-4 games in one. Simple "theme park" MMOs often have 10x NQ's budget. There's a line between ambition and hubris and DU was always beyond that line. 
 
People believed that they could do it because NQ claimed they had cutting edge tech, some new algorithm or infra that would make voxels-at-scale somehow work in a cost-effective way. Of course, this wasn't true. 
 
I'm very critical, but I do understand how impossible NQ's initial vision was. 
 
Compromises to the "initial vision" were inevitable because that was a rambling pipe dream conjured up by someone with zero experience in game dev and little experience in commercial software development in general...
 
However, compromises still need a design clarity and to work toward making the game more engaging. In the past few years, that clarity has been shown to be severely lacking. 
 
This idea that they merely need to "stick to the initial vision" is really puzzling to me...how are they supposed to magically solve the problems inherent in that vision? Not with cutting edge tech that doesn't exist. Not with infra scale they can't pay for. Not with time they don't have. 
 
This idea that NQ is merely following the wrong suggestions is equally odd. We know that many recent design changes are driven by cost and scale because they've been clear that this is a motivation. They have agency. You can't give them credit for all the things you like about the game, but then blame everything else on them "following the wrong advice". 

The first time around, players also loathed NQ's schematic idea. When they deployed it anyway, they made a post about how it they were right to do it...because again, they're so focused on solving this one "problem" in isolation they forget that their goal is to make an engaging game. 
 
I'm expecting the exact same process this time.
 
They will push this out and explain that players don't understand the issue and this "solves" a critical problem, all while they've made the game less engaging. Then they wonder why feedback isn't more "balanced" and blame players for not understanding how game development works. 
 
There's a lot of engaging ways to create factory upkeep...there's factory games like Satisfactory or Factorio they could draw inspiration from.
 
Instead, someone thought it would be fun to make a factory where you need to shovel papers into machines every now and then...which again emphasizes the lack of design experience. 

Sadly i have to agree, pre 0.23 things were indeed going in the right direction including player driven events and fun stuff to do, mass mining and merchandise and Ore transportation.
0.23 ended all that and more. It also effectively ended designing ships and bases for alot of players and sadly i was doing that under contract, but well stuff was not crafted anymore and the contract party left DU.
Imagine where we would be now without 0.23 and visualize that to what we now see, that makes me sad.
 
Our organization was building ships for the PvP zone to mine more dangerous and to haul stuff over but after 0.23 that stopped as the costs did not benefit the risks anymore so in fact 0.23 did not only affect industry but i believe it killed a slow pvp uprizing in its starting days. 
 
And the bad thing is, the proposed new system will not bring that back as it is inherently as bad as the old system of schematics, it just has a "we will solve this"flavour over it. But nothing is solved, just another time and quanta sink is introduced
 
With this form of ideas and development we dont need grievers or negative people, this game will kill itself before we will even see release and then poof another few hundred euros down the drain.
 
 
Maybe they can still change the text on the T-shirt int:
 
 
"I invested in a game but the developers could not deliver as they never really listed and all i got was this T-shirt"
 

It's crazy how DU doesn't even really have the basics that MMOs had 20 years ago for social interaction.  Yes we have discord which is great for people you already know. But tools that help meet people ingame helps so so much.  

Everything constantly moving to aphelia and things NQ controlled (asteroids and alien cores) just proves the game is going as far away from player driven as can be.  And it all just leads to BORING. Imagine back in 2020 when beta released, no schematics, a decent starting player base. Now Imagine only Sanctuary safe zone and elements died at a good rate in pvp and pve. Game would of been alive and super player driven.  DU is not redeemable in my eyes and whatever bastardized version that limps to release you can bet I won't be paying for it, I will also tell any friend that asks about it to stay away too.

I'm not sure what you mean, here. I have paid. The cost per sub is not merely a cost to keep the servers running...I am deeply familiar with how cost and billing works for servers spun up via AWS. Monthly sub per user certainly isn't an option...
 
No? 🤷‍♂️ 
 
I do respect your opinion, but see things very differently.
 
I don't agree NQ is addressing player feedback...nor do I think the issues is with new players that "don't share the vision", nor do I agree that NQ "isn't responsible" for making content when the tools available hardly allow players to really create emergent gameplay.
 
I don't think wanting to be "entertained" by a product marketed, developed, and presented as a video game (MMORPG) is so unreasonable.
 
If they wanted to make a real metaverse, they should have done that. The tools available aren't nearly robust or expansive enough to create all this content you seem to think we players are responsible for. 
 
NQ runs every piece of content that matters right now, not players: the exchange, all alien cores (the only form of TW in existence), all markets, all asteroids, all safe zones, bots, and missions. 
 
All that speaks to a game that isn't a world that's "up to us" to build...it speaks to a sandbox with such limited tools for creating emergent experiences, they had to throw some content together because they knew it wasn't working as a game. And it is a game, not just a "content platform" as they want to insist. Their website is dualuniverse.game, not dualuniverse.kind-of-metaverse.com 

First, branding all complaints as "whining" is showcasing a one-sided empathy...toward the poor company who is setting out to make a profit by selling us a product. 
 
Second, this idea that the game will fail because the community didn't do their part is puzzling. Our part is to pay hard-earned money to the company in exchange for a product. We pay them a fee every single month and in return we get to play the game.
 
And it is a game. It isn't a "parallel" world and this belief that it was ever going to be that is misguided.
 
It was advertised as a game, presented as a game, and developed as a game. It was never a metaverse and it was never going to be, no matter what you think the Kickstarter said. 
 
This idea that you don't have a right to complain if you can't do it better yourself...well, that must be a cultural thing because I strongly disagree with that sentiment.
 
This is very obviously a commercial arrangement -- NQ wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it takes to make even at the expense of their players, so let's not pretend that this is anything but a commercial relationship.
 
No one owes NQ "loyalty". If this was a free or open source project? Okay, then I'd agree -- grab your own nose or whatever. But we're the ones paying. We're the customers. If it is our "job" to help NQ, then they ought to be the ones paying us. 
 
All this negative feedback is for NQ's benefit...telling them to keep on doing the same thing will only spell doom when it's time to release. 

I don't disagree, but what is the point of "reminding" them...?
 
They've showed over and over and over in the past 6 years that they aren't interested in player feedback or communication. I mean, it's been like about 3 months now and they can't even explain what level of persistence the game will have, haha! 
 
Even if they did read and agree with you, this ship has sailed a long time ago.
 
They're steaming forward to release and there's no time to make sweeping changes to the design. Certainly not enough time to fix these fundamental flaws. 
 
I get that people are disappointed at how far DU has diverged from what was promised, but they won't engage with suggestions about bringing it back on track even if they did have the time to actually do so. 
 
It's hard to root for NQ when they don't really want to discuss the game with their customers. They present an attitude of them knowing what's best for DU and everyone else is just a complainer or a know-it-all. 

I think aphelia is just skynet.  Skynet is smart and is able to learn. It first tried to kill all humans, and tried to kill John Connor but that failed, but in the end learned instead of killing humans they were easily manipulated. Give them the illusion on "freedom". Make the humans run the machines.  Aphelia is just the next evolution of skynet.  

I hope that this was a fun event for those that were there. I don't mind the idea of the exchange; I agree that it would be better to have player-run markets, but I get that this was a compromise done so that NQ wouldn't have to spend time on engineering. 
 
The thing that stands out to me is that there's like 40 people...all of them just colorized versions of the same model. So IMHO pictures of crowds in DU don't really connect as marketing material because it tends to emphasize how players aren't individuals.
 
They are faceless clones.
 
Faceless clones expected to pay taxes and feed schematics to machines between checking in on auto-miners. The RP in this game has become full-on dystopia very quickly. Aphelia is pure evil. 

It's crazy how DU doesn't even really have the basics that MMOs had 20 years ago for social interaction.  Yes we have discord which is great for people you already know. But tools that help meet people ingame helps so so much.