Kurosawa

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.

My District 6 tile is filled with abandoned dynamic constructs that I have to move away in increments (move tool timeout) to keep the litter out of sight. And all I am effectively doing is push the problem over to the next tile, and hope he/she won't just push it back over to my tile again.
 
And the solution is dead simple. Implement a parking fee function that would have solved not only this, but also the District spam problem.
 
It is all the small simple stuff like this that brings the general impression down.
 
- How did they manage to implement a notification system so badly that it lagged the game?
- A talent queue with no sorting functionality other then manually dragging stuff up and down?
- Search tab not active when you enter market/inventory etc. panels, so you have to manually click it every time
- A chat system from the early 2000's
 
and so the list goes on..

I think you mean years.
 
This was one of the things we kept bringing up during the closed pre-alpha testing. Since NQ keept ignoring all those small and easy to fix bug issues that where accumulating into a bad experience overall.
 
Instead NQ wanted to focus on the big "we know best" stuff and make large patches like they already where in a released game, instead of small incremental ones like any sane dev team would do (waterfall vs agile). And as a result there was no feeling of gradual improvements. And in the end they failed at the "we know best" stuff, and the bugs and lousy UX/UI design they could have fixed to improve quality of life also remained..
 
And this multiplied by many similar issues, is why there are so many "angry vets" in this game.

That is becaue NQ is not working to make the game fun anymore. They are doing what they can to keep the lights on.
 
They worked themselves into the situation they are in becasue they never had an actual plan and never tried to change course unless they allready smashesd into the wall, even when many of us kept signallingthem of the waall they were about to hit.
 
 
After al lthese years, they still seem to think they can build their sandbox and tens of thousands of players wil lmagincally show up and start building content for them. They still keep making the same mistakes and the same bugs keep showing up.. Several small but annoying issues, especially in the UI/UX have been around for many, many months, shoudl be easy enough to fix but are ignored.
 
Case in point.. they once again broke entering Lua parameters in Demeter.
 

I agree with the original post completely.. resources need to be plentiful for this game to work. I thought I would have more time and freedom to actually make this game more fun for myself and everyone else with automated mining units, but instead I'm stuck on my same 5 tiles, playing the same mini-game multiple times every day to just keep things running.. I'm much more interested in doing everything I can to change the current dynamics here on the forums than play the game any more.. I love what DU could be, but we need resources to be plentiful, and not taxed away into oblivion, for us to be willing to loose our creations in actual fun PVP gameplay.

That still won't do it, as core size cost is relative to player progression curve. You might not think a S or M core is a big deal to lose, but to newer/smaller players that may have been a major time investment or monetary investment to build and operate. I agree that L core is always better is a fault, but even balancing in this regard is not going to change how valuable a ship loss is to a player. The base cost in time/effort for a player to build/operate a basic ship is just to high. The pain-of-loss extends even to travel times for example. If someone spends 2 hours slow boating just to get destroyed in a couple of minutes they have 'lost' 2 hours of their life. This particular issue goes to what le_souriceau was saying.

I am going to try and articulated these thoughts as succinctly as possible but it's a broad concept.
 
Working with DU general vision of a gaggle of players all living in DU, building org's, fighting over resources and buzzing with activity.
 
The problem with this vision as it stand now is the game systems and dev direction work against it's success. Basic game theory premise: People play games for fun, the closer a game gets to a job or the higher the pain of loss, the fewer players will continue. Unlike the real world you can't 'force' players to accept excessive hardship. MMO's require a large player base to survive. 
 
Currently the dev direction continues to try and add 'value' to things in game. I assume this is under the idea that if people care about there stuff then they are more likely to covet it , care about their efforts in game giving them reason to stick around and value their acquisitions. There is also a general push to 'force' players into groups in order to not be locked out of game content. The primary issue with this current game approach is it violates the basic game theory. Every time they make the game 'harder', or more 'group or don't play', or grindy, they lose players.
 
Open PvP cannot exist for the vast majority of players in the game where Pain of Loss is as high as it is. Player are simply not going to spend a week or two building a ship and gathering the materials for it, only to have blown up in a couple minutes and accept that as a good game experience. No matter what the few orgs that dominate in this space think, every player they gank that leaves because the pain threshold is to high is one DU step closer to server shut down.
 
The general effort by NQ to 'force' people to play in groups is highly counter-productive. Working together should carry advantages that encourage people to want to group as their desire to scale their game experience grows. You cannot tell players 'join an org or quit', they will choose the latter. We are 'forced' into organizations we don't want to be part of IRL all the time and players don't want or need this replicated in the games they play.
 
Solution:
 
The core problem for DU is that pain of loss is far to high to sustain most players in the activities that would make the DU concept work. Ore acquisition is the primary culprit here, with industry gating being a secondary but more complex. MU's could have solved this issue by making ore readily accessible to everyone, but then they hard locked what a player can produce with this charges/calibration system. You WANT players to acquire lots of territory and produce a ton of cheap ore. If this is one dedicated player or an organization is not the problem.
 
The issue with this is the obvious lock down of vast amounts of territories by players that can never lose them so long as the bots make sure tiles are profitable. This would not be an issue if territories could actually be attacked. That would force players to defend said territories thus limiting their expansion in a more normalized way. The way to naturally curb such over acquisition as the game stands now is to remove ore bots and allow the natural ore market to make tiles unprofitable/profitable based on supply/demand. Normalize sanctuary ore distribution and remove tax for mining there to create a baseline ore production of T1 for all players. This helps to insulate newbies from being cut off from the T1 game experiences and allows players to always have some amount of ore availible for building for 'free'. You could also prevent omni factories on sanctuary by limiting industry machines to T1 level from being built on sanctuary. This would also require some level of fuel ores to be availible to sanctuary tiles since the core 3 planets T2 is so blindly rare now and would be monopolized in current form. 
 
The net-net effect has to be to make ore acquisition prolific and cheap at least for T1-T2, ore bots artificially prevent this and prevent any 'free' or ore baseline on sanctuary form being viable. This unlocks the ability for most players to participate in the game be it via building things, building basic ships and parts, and low-tier industry. If players can make and produce basic ships for dirt cheap, then their pain of loss in PvP would be significantly reduced. It is important to consider PvP will NEVER work if the loss of a ship causes the player to much pain of loss. We don't need most ships to be valuable to encourage warfare, the future TW's over outer planets higher tier resources will give people plenty of reason to fight or risk going out there. Simply adding a metric that the org owning the most tiles on an outer planet get a cut of the tile taxes would be enough reason for major wars. People won't risk going out there if a single combat wipes out weeks of in game effort. 
 
 The common argument that ore bots are a needed faucet are in-valid in a game world where you get daily cash and have missions to gain more. You need a baseline player experience where most player can access a lot of content, with the effort and value coming from grouping, logistics, fighting for control and generally interacting with other players.
 
Current dev game theory path is never going to reach critical mass. Pain of Loss HAS to be drastically reduced for most of DU's general concept to function. Solo players HAVE to have access to more of the game not less, and I don't mean the solo players that log in for many hours every day. If the game only ever caters to a hardcore organized group of a players thats all the game will ever have. NQ probably knows how many players they need to keep the game open, and I'm pretty sure what we have is not it, especially when NQ continues to take steps AWAY from the model that would make DU work we bleed more players.
 
This is about as much constructive criticism as I can muster for DU. These changes could be implemented very quickly (minus the TW part), and would help to get players to return to the game or stick around. But it hinges on NQ being open minded enough to realize their current vision has to be adjusted. The more content is locked from most players without excessive effort, the more pain of loss exists, the less and less players DU will maintain.   

It's totally exciting to fly 60su through space.

And that most likely means players leaving the game.
 
So once again like with 0.23, NQ has managed to drive away players with their "game saving" features. Makes you wonder how many more "features" this game can survive..

Feedback is simple, your update is poorly thought out. I'm not sure what the dev meetings must be like over there at NQ but let me make this KISS for you folks:
 
Currently:
 
Zero reason to build anything period outside of a ship. Especially now with your well thought out brutal tax on any grand building ideas creatives might have ever had for POI's. 
PvP that most hate and even the PvP'ers have to admit sucks in it's implementation, never mind completely broken risk vs reward balance
Player based economy is a joke with your constant meddling with bots & refusal to let players setup markets
Industrial gameplay that was put out of reach of all but groups or highly dedicated no lifers with endless time on their hands
Gigantic game world that is so sparsely populated deserts in the real world seem to team with life by comparison
Asteroid mechanics that defy game design logic in their implementation (I mean really is it THAT hard for you to spawn roids randomly and continually like literally every space game with mining ... ever?)
Completely broken organization tools that make managing any group harder not easier. 
Mission system that could have be automatic and really helped the game world when it comes to posting / payouts , instead is a hot mess of must be present hand shaking nonsense. 
 
I could go on honestly, but EVERY single time you people do an update you overcomplicate everything and make it a nightmarish chore, rather then simply go "here are auto miners, enjoy". Asteroids same darn thing, couldn't just create a asteroid belt in the game and have rocks spawn randomly for period of time, part in the safe zone part out? OH NO , you had to make even something simple like digging a rock the most arse backwards design of all time. 
 
*sighs* I am not sure what your grand vision for DU is anymore , but it certainly does not contain the word 'fun' for most people. Every update makes the game more grindy, more work, less reward. The only joy people seem to have anymore is sitting in Discord / Forums talking about game theory of what DU might have been if it wasn't what it is.
 

Somehow the DU forum is pretty good at derailing every topic.
So I will just post my opinion about the "derailed" part which barely touches the original post. I am sorry.
 
Some people are very involved in the game. They are like
"Just login every day and everything is fine. And then you just do some missions which take roughly 4 hours AFKing and you are totally wealthy".
Problem is: Not everyone is playing games this way. Some people like to play a bit when they want to.
 
And about the "maths" part in this topic:
I probably "could" do the maths. But I just want to play this game for fun. If I am required to do maths about my possible income and wether or not I am able to pay my tile is a pretty bad game design idea. Because not everyone wants to min/max a game.
Some people just want to have fun and relax a bit.

What NQ/DU needs more then anything else is more customers/players. So not even NQ would consider making the game worse on purpose..   right?
 
On the other hand, what really get to me is their inability to execute anything in a sensible fashion.
Having some kind of mechanics that will free up inactive tiles is actually a good thing. But their implementation is truly and utterly bonkers, and riddled with so many obvious problems that it is mind blowing they are even considering it for the live servers.
 
1. As long as players are paying the subscription, they should own their own constructs. This was after all supposed to be a persistent building MMO universe. In fact this was the number one selling point of this game during the Kickstarter. An inactive tile means the players has stopped paying a subscription, not that they have not logged in the last week and done their daily chores as dictated by NQ (which is something that goes directly against the "make your own game" motto of the initial game premise).
 
2. The main feature of this game is building. So please NQ, for the love of... Stop making road blocks for people who actually want to build. You are now directing a large percentage of player time and building resources into just maintaining tiles.
 
3. Not everyone is a billionaire. I have been playing this game since day one, and currently I have something like 20mill in my account. I don't care about building a financial empire, running missions or grinding just for the sake of it. I just need enough resources to do my building experiments, enjoying the game the way I want, when I want to. All in accordance with the "make your own game" premise you said we should be able to do.
 
So any frequent login requirement for chores and territory tax above some symbolic sum, means I cannot play my game. And is in effect a death sentence for me and I suspect a lot of the solo creative players. You know.. The people who actually make interesting content for the game. Content you are now trying to remove from the game..
 
 

That only works if the ore goes straight into producing something that is worth more on the markets.
Buying ore for large base build projects etc. dosen't work in the long run for obvious reasons. And mining fatigue is a REAL thing in this game, and is making players quit.

schematics turned the game from an open building game in tot a mining grind fest survival simulator, which for me is just a big no.
So patch .23, combined with all the other errors and DU apparent meeeeh good enough attitude was the nail in my coffin

schematics turned the game from an open building game in tot a mining grind fest survival simulator, which for me is just a big no.
So patch .23, combined with all the other errors and DU apparent meeeeh good enough attitude was the nail in my coffin

schematics turned the game from an open building game in tot a mining grind fest survival simulator, which for me is just a big no.
So patch .23, combined with all the other errors and DU apparent meeeeh good enough attitude was the nail in my coffin

No idea where they are needed for, to frustrate people? hold them back? money sink? Because decent development of a research approach to crafting was never tried? Because nanananana? till this day i have not seen a single reason why they are needed that makes sence.
 
But apparently the schematics were needed more then a few thousand alpha players who really stopped playing in the week following the introduction. And all is well with a good reason or explanation, but none is given.
 

I've said it before and I'll keep on saying it, I really don't like NQ when they use the word exploit.... It's a weasel word that attempts to shift the blame from the devs' own mistakes onto the player base when it's actually a bug.

In fact in this case, it's not even a bug, but an as yet completely undeveloped aspect of the game.

Also, non consensual boarding has got to be one of the lamest things I've heard all day.

Since NQ does not care, i might as well give my point of view. 
 
Pure socialism does not exist in the world, in the exact same way that pure capitalism does not exist in the world. 
 
Capitalism is the "right" extreme of the same scaled metric that socialism is the left "extreme" 
 
So countries are defined by a pseudo % of capitalism and socialism.
A raw % could even be defined by the amount of the economy that is affected by socialism compared to capitalism. 
 
One could say that Country A is 10% socialist and 90% capitalist, while Country B is 60% socialist and 40% capitalist. 
 
But trying to glue "socialism" to "dictatorship" is a childish move that may have some effect in the north american continent but not to the rest of the world. 
 
EU countries apear to be economically successful and have a much bigger % of socialism than american countries. 
 
Even in the US, states with higher % of socialism appear to have a good economy balance and still offer good living conditions to their population. 
 
This opinion does not mean im suggesting 100% socialism. 
It would suck to have 100% socialism..... 
 
I like that private companies make smartphones and computers and cars, etc. 
But i dont want private companies choosing to not cure my illness because it is more profitable to treat symptoms.
 
But leaders and politics are to be chosen democratically by the population. 
 
If the population wants to have a buffoon ripping trade agreements that represent alliances and saying that their country is N1, so be it. 
 
If the pupulation wants to make sure that there is a minimal level of education, health and culture, to point their country to a better future, so be it. 

You do realize that you are basically showing that you are just looking at any of these games through the same subjective filter, applying what you believe to be the case to end up with the result you expect right?
 
You also show that your idea of what a game is about is very narrow and you are pretty much choosing to ignore anything that falls outside of your personal view of a game, regardless of how intrinsic and valuable those other things may be to the game.

In short; you are part of the problem in this regard, not part of the solution, or the truth even.

You guys don't get it...
For ppl like the OP, the word socialism is not what a definition says.
It is an insult. It is 100% synonymous of the enemy, of hell, of everything that ppl should not be.

A certain group of countries created this hate against this word to justify wars and commercial deals.
Now that the Cold War is over, a certain group of political activists use that word to fulfill their agenda.

Their agenda is simple, it is to discriminate everything associated with the word. To make any idea related to the word "undebatable" because it is evil. And everyone that does not agree that the word is evil is also evil.
In summary, the end of constructive debate...
 
 
But back to this topic.
The op lives in this environment where "socialism" is evil.
And tried to associate some DU mechanic with "evil" to make it "undebatable"
I don't believe the OP knows what "socialism" is in any definition, and I don't think the OP actually thinks his complaint is about socialism.
 
He just used the word to have an "impact" tittle and some "support" from similar players.

If you see a problem with DU, explain it and the mechanics that trigger it. 
 
Leave RL politics out of this. 
We dont care that your RL country has issues with the word "socialism"... 
 
No one is required to "share" a org. 
RDMS allows for you to share stuff with ppl individually without any org being needed. 
So you are not forced into nothing... 

I think you need to educate yourself on what socialism actually is before making oddball suggestions like this.

I get what you mean here -- and why it is frustrating. 
 
However...just because it works for you on Win7 doesn't mean it works for everyone on Win7 or that it will continue working as they roll out more updates. 
 
Consider how supporting an extra OS complicates QA. They have to test it on Win7 -- they can't just assume it works. Even if they do, they would need a Win7 environment to diagnose bugs unless they simply ignore all reports from Win7 users. 
 
Microsoft's support for an OS does matter to makers of software -- including software that NQ relies on to make their game like Unigen, which could add some low-level optimization that breaks on Win7 and forces NQ to pick between legacy OS support or better tech.
 
I get that the game works fine for your machine for this version, but it isn't an 'arbitrary' reason.
 
Beyond all the technical infrastructure that goes into supporting an older OS, Windows 7 is now 11 years old with decreasing global usage (~15%) especially among gamers (on steam, just 0.16% of users are on Win7...because Steam no longer supports it) -- you can't blame NQ for thinking it isn't worth the extra steps in testing or QA! 
 
TBH....I completely agree that they should "just let it run" if they can, but it isn't so simple as flipping a switch or not. 

We need "Dramatic Exit" doors in real life, it would be hilarious