le_souriceau

What is tragic, that most (if not all) serious problems/bugs/exploits/everying-in-between actualy found and reported by community in hours, days, rarely even weeks since every major or minor release. Sure, some bad apples here and there, but in general, community not even hides serious things fron NQ (like in some other games). But speed with wihch such reports investigated or acted upon... painful to observe. Like literaly its beyond joke to read about fixes of exploits that lasted (and enjoyed to break game) several months or half of year in persistent and, presumably, no wipe ecosystem.

Yeah, I suffered same reaction. And one silent scream question inside: WHY EVERYTHING NOW OLD AND DIRTY?!

This idea repeated almost religiously again and again with some scrapegoating fantaises of blaming "trolls" for game questionable perfomance... But it does very little sense. Such critiques super internal. If potential player in doubts (after encountering word of mouth or seeing some lame NQ adverts), he most likely go Youtube or Twitch (for some streams) seriously first, to see game "reviews" and things in action. This will be majority of desicion making process for majority of people in question. When they in (and payed), 99% of no-brains-issues adults (and this is very high average age game) can figure out for themeselfs if they like it or not. If someone so fragile and weak-willed can be persuaded to not play game he likes by angry forum posts or grumpy Discord discussion, seriously, he has bigger issues, then this. If game is doing ok, no one can stop players joining and enjoying. And if its shit and fails, no ammount of guit-tossing between players will help. Simple as that.

As generaly passionate person, who likes to put heart into something, dream and do it little bit too much, I feel very exausted/frustrated over DU lately with all these fails, unclear perspectives and proverbial red flags, that very dangerously close to what we seen in failed MMOs in past. So I decided to finish articles I still working and give it some rest until summer. Force myself out of loop. People who like against our "critical wave" right in one thing -- its useless, mainly because we talking more with corpse currently.

What is most tragic and tormenting to me personaly here, that 3/4 of things you mentioned have objectivly not that "expensive" on dev time, little of assets or complex interactions. Its just about disign in someones head. I like always igniting, thinking, like, damn, give me some modder dudes from MC and we can do better job with it. So much wasted potential.

For me most of magic died out, when I realised, that (at least -- currently) game not about cool space empires/interconnected society, politics and wars, but about small groups (or even solo) of boring nerds, sitting on their factories and containers, bragging how much useless shit they producing, owning or building. Amazing creations.

NMC Special Recent divisive and irresponsable actions of president Porco lead to widespread protests in tribal areas of Madistan. Local people who hold Phallus as most holy symbol (along with Salt) were deeply offended by so called "Dick Measuring Contest" organized by Porco. Desert shamans burned president effigies, crowds filled squares and streets in bitter anger and resentment, holding anti-porcan and anti-aliothian banners, chanting religious and patriotic songs. Betwen protesting madistani we see large groups of MLF (Madistan Liberation Front) resistance fighers, mostly from groups lead by brigadier general personality_matrix and prophet gentry -- their idealized portraits used by their men as shoulder patches. Young warrior with brand new Hyperion-made rail-rifle steps forward, his eyes burning with anger: - May coward Porco know, this perverted dog, that we make ground burn under his feet! Justice will be done, six pillars of hell crush upon him. By Salt allmighty! Madistan! - Madistan! Madistan! -- other warriors join in mighty roar, raising their weapons. Some start to fire in skies passionatly, wasting a lot of ammo.

My dream to have clear roster of NQ like this: https://anvilgamestudios.com/presskit/#credits But we know well...

OMG guys, what you arguing about. Its quite clear. 1) make logical mechanical hierarchy who (what entities) can ovveride ownership; 2) when, via some timers of non-activity/subs end; 3) write clear and detailed rules about it, put some warnings in game, e-mail system to warn; 4) set it work automaticly! control bugs and unentended hard abuses; 0) make it so from start of live service! We even done this on amateur-unpaid-run MC servers without that much trouble, when dealing with territory ownership. All you need is clear head (1) and (1) semi-competent programmer who can establish semi-ok database. May even be same person.

Shame they not even allowed her (?) to make farewell post or something! Its super sad, that Naunet actualy tried for short while be our real, so much needed CM, but then was put in chains and muted of, I guess, to conform to "internal way of doing things" (doing nothing!). Its mind bogling, that hired CMs actualy not allowed to do their CMing thing for some twisted reason. Yet, she leaving such company likely for best in professsional way. Less time wasted.

Worked in marketing a bit and I have impression its contrary thing -- they likely not to involved with serious decision-making, judging from what I seen. Like we catched Sesch here and asked about recruit a friend program and he was somewhat lost about it, saying website not in good condition, but this is not priority (?). Lots and lots of other questionable things about marketing (and generaly -- lack of any activity in this regard), that make me kinda doubt that they are evil force responsable for situation. More like 5th wheel.

Ironicly... some of Minecraft fan-made plugins for managing territory gameplay done endlessly better job in actual runnin of city/clan/nation (or other complex public entities) then clumsy abomination of NQ RDMS for "civilization building MMO". They were so easy and intuitive, that I seen even 9-10 yo kids were able to effectivly handle them on basic level after some figuring out. Just check it this out for comparison: https://github.com/TownyAdvanced/Towny/wiki/How-Towny-Works

I think at this sad point, it will be great if we get at least something remotly working as intented. All this dreaming about this and that, sounds like fine dining fantasies in soup line.

I was avid minecrafter before, but after years started to feel kinda "limited" by primitive blocky existence. Also, always wanted to try EVE-like MMO (politics/mega-wars and all this), but time and time hesitated because of "too late late to start" thoughs. Found DU fooling around on KS. I lurked hard from 2016, but backed only in 2020, because of serious doubts over viability of project. Likely it was bad bet, but community is great, made some new friends do to stuff beyond DU (in worst case).

And all this "hiding" is totaly useless, because people not that stupid. I even say all this childish trickery NQ sometimes try to pull on us is especialy cringy, because most of players here are ralativly old dudes, who seen a lot of shit in MMOs over last 20 years or more, they can do basic 1+1.

Yep, sorry to ruin it, but its exercise in futility. Currently we often begging for months about simplest QOL things without any results. Devs now preocuppied with survival basicly, they nor care about your ideas (there is 1000s others in line), nor can realisticly implement them next eternity.

I always have impression, that NQ also impossibly horrible with "doing more with less" thing. In MC I done quite a lot of admining and, to extent, developing (in very humble scale) of custom economies/mods and all this stuff when it was really popular. We had some kind of (usualy very bad) programmers and "middleware" (mods of others guys to tinker) and being low on all other resources as unpaid amateurs. So we always tried like add maximum of value features for players with low "dev effort" things or carefully managed mini (but regular) events. In DU I constantly and clearly see here and there such opportunities to implement little goodies to enchance player engagement (and retaintion) but they all ingored. Instead NQ can only move forward with sluggish/clumsy big updates, they usualy can't even use to full extent for player enjoyment.

Maybe I'm even more "toxic", then others, but I think its not really 3+ month. More, actualy. Considering how very little of new things we got since start of Beta, its almost safe to keep count not from november, but september.

@Fra119 Sadly, no. Main thing -- "ground world" is too large, boring and empty, poor resource/industry systems not helps too (activities need to be more interesting to keep people here). Relativly featureless 3d spheres with evenly spread ore clusters. Beyond their ore and ability to use markets, host mostly decorative buildings, planets in DU are useless husks. Currently, at least. So flying around fast and fooling around with ships is in way psycological salvation from deficiencies of DU systems. You proposal kinda can work in much more dense, interesting worlds, with climates/hazzards, terrain challenges, different economical uses of land, events, all this, from fantasies. Generaly where some infrustructure makes long-term sense.

Well, as aways plans gone seriously astray and couple of guys who I wanted to interivews run off from me and likely game. Also I had creative depression over 0.23. Yet, I'm again warming up with some Twitter news. Bigger things slowly reviving too.

Probably old news for some (more informed and omnipresent) people, but was initialy quite a suprise for me... Likely all devs discuss each other games in private and sometimes not in most prettiest ways, but public statements like this, while DU on hard spot, felt to me kinda wrong, even sparked some strange patriotic feelings, considering I'm usualy on very harsh critic side myself. Chris Roberts (being totaly not saint in many other regards) showed back then "space nerds solidarity" in critical moment of DU KS, yet for some reason FrozenByte prefering to do somewhat reverse thing. Maybe to appease some of our grumpy refugees? What do you think?

In extreamly condensed formula civilization development is chain of challenges and rewards. People notice potential in river valleys and, investing crapton of labour, getting huge ammout of food as reward. Then they need better "managment" system -- here we go, writing, new rewards, new prospects open. Nearby city doing some shit -- military progress sparks, etc. In DU context we currently simply have nor serious game mechanical challenges, nor interesting rewards. There is no stimulus to do anything together on really serious scale (beyond some mostly creative projects and interest clubs). So we stuck in much more primitive phase, pre-civilization so to say.

Problem of DU, that even little amount of features game has... kinda inert and not used in actual game mechanics. 1) Pile of elements can perfectly fine work as ship (beyond PvP). 2) PvP = ... 3) Platform with indy machines and boxes -- only base you need. 4) Planets are large, but all the same and empty, so you can slap your platform everywhere. 5) Distances are wast, but generaly only to waste your time. And so on. Generaly only decorative aspect remains. Lua little bit more complex story, but it can't drag game alone.

Main issue here is population effect. 0.23 (beyond good/bad ecomonical side long run -- another topic) devastated already humble game population by alienating huge chunk of solo/small group/more casual players. Things can be said here like "game not for them", ok, they left, but i'm not seeing millions of "right kind of" players who come to enjoy new economy. Clumsy knocking out of warp safety (without reasonable compesating systems/mechanics) -- just to "feed" impatient PvPers, will end up with similar (or even worse) exodus, something game barely can afford. This said, I agree, that game desperatly needs more meaningful conflict, but preferably must be some sort of relativly "combatant vs combatant objectives" thing. (And don't give me "but they can hire escorts" BS, its not how its working).

There also were ones, that kinda fanaticly repeated what NQ "wanted to hear" (endless re-iterations of broadly stated JC ideas of how great will be our civilization, organization gameplay, player content creation and all this stuff), tearing apart anyone who questioned if it even work in real game, considering existing (or more correctly -- non-existing) systems to support it. And, mega ironicly, while I'm not name names, some of loudest adepts of this "school" were ones who quit first after tasting reality and likely never to be seen again.