le_souriceau

Not like it matter, but I guess its even 4th, if we go detailed way. 1) Initial KS backers ("something not right") Game postponent over 2 years Methodical downgrade of KS promises with less and less to be delivered realisticly any time soon (AvA) Start of legendary NQ comms to take negative effect on community First suspicions about JC lying about progress 2) "Alpha" players (disapointments over sharp difference of KS-promises and actual game delivered) Disgusting technical state of game Painfully slow development progress Choking NDA clearly made to hide miserable reality of game for better sales Total ignore of player feedback Obvious signs of JC lying about state of game/perspectives Futher cuts/downgrades in game features on road to Beta Refinement of bad comms (somewhat saved by Naerais tacticaly) 3) "Beta" wave (revelations of true state of affairs) False, misleading adverts Shitty launch with previous feedback ingored Lack of mechanics/content Carebear paradise with overdone SZ M15 cringy NQ reaction Endless, industrial scale exploits, ruining economy 0.23 Schematics scandal Naunet left and it left sour taste over NQ happenings Basicly no progress for half of year Bad comms achieve peak JC cowardly flight and overall decline of morale SB temptations 4) Derelict stubborn survivors and brave new noobs (any hope?) Much more punishment oriented community managment. In process...

Yeah, if anything, chronical lack of comms and glacial rate of progress/fixing, false adverts for years turned people "toxic" (most of them started as quite optimistic fans, who trusted NQ a lot of money). I myself traveled all way from being rather exited and romantic about DU to deepest depths of resentment over all lies and bullshit we endured. Even now NQ chosen path of not owning their mistakes, but weasel out (with shameful silent JC getaway, and all this long, euphemistic blogs about "way forward", they kinda dancing around long circles why all this shit happend). On other note, again, its as I undestand it linked to actual dev capacity, that is very small -- roadmap extreamly steatched and thin, like very little people actualy working on it. To be fair, FB too bit mucked up (this why I not liked Lauri bragging publicly in "comaprison" style with DU) -- they too rolled thing with atrocious fist-time user experience. Contrary to tech problems (they are undenstardable), tutorials and overall starting sequence was well within their grasp to make it better.

Well, not fan of the name (to be super honest!), but overall very reasonable thing to do. Always was almost religious enemy of DU "zombie orgs", all this dead shit from "forum only" rpg times of DU, with 100-200-300 bs rosters, not playing "great leader" and 2-3 sad bastards on ground (actualy), who bothered only with their own little factory. This shit must go into abyss. Its great you liberated yourself fron this dead weight. Make sure you document your adventures in asteroid era, not playing much myself lately, but still interested in good story/event/salt.

Well, kinda "unfair" more like figure of speach, like "who can guessed", "comparison result is predictable"; I sometimes fail in translate nuances into english. But yeah, questionable empoyee policy was at root of NQs severe problems. My personal theory JC mucked it up brining too much sycophancy into the play. It was nice for him (until proverbial "recoking"), but bad for game.

Part of problem with current roadmap, that with usual NQ trasperancy there is no context how many actual developers work on it. Because it means huge difference. If its just Deckard with half-dozen other overworked dudes, who stuggle for survival under pressure of 50 useless managers -- this roadmap is mucking heroic, I salute them. It also mean, that comparing DU progress with SB one is just unfair. They had likely several times more actual manpower and better leadership. With DU I honestly not even know who in charge, JC run off, Entrophy, if he still alive, copletly hidden himself under rock.

On this I can totaly agree. Wipe or not wipe question by itself irrelevant before some fundamental changes in NQ mode of operations and, consequently, game. I'm speaking about kinda "ideal" situation where NQ magicly figured it all out to level when game is competitive on market ---- and can be again rolled with more or less meaningfull advert $$$ to official launch.

Critical thing here -- RE-LAUNCH. Because DU life/death level need to have it strongest way possible, considering population issues. It means placating newcomers (this ideally large, "last hope" wave) to fullest. Even by sacrificing small number of vets (sound cynical, yes). Re-launching with 3 years baggage its serious weakening of game attractivity, because, by my experience, people in such games both like to start fresh and hate to start behind (and no wiping means they will start deep in ass behind). I had this argument 1000 times here, when people "but in MMOs you new players always behind vets, and what..." Difference here lies in situation when DU criticly dependant on this re-launching crowd. Ones who slowly come later, sure, who cares, its another matter. I honestly loosing any hope someone understands me on this, beyond their agression about loosing their stuff.

NQ put themeselves in deep trap, "promising" no wipe so early in so troubled and delayed development. It is obvious, that for viable re-launch, game needs full unconditional wipe. Potential new players will be absolutly not impressed to go for "official launch" of new MMO only to learn they 3 years behind in skills and, most importantly, exploit-ridden economy with trilionnaires. It makes no sense. Yet, even more obvious, that most of veterans who still here ABSOLUTLY NOT WANT fair game. They will go rabid to protect their advantage, so even if NQ have any shy dream to actualy do full wipe, they will need to go over bodies convulsing in tantrums. And vets have their point too (with money/time/things). Its hard situation. NQs fault.

Why you even bothered? Its usualy made by academicly disabled (in terms of data handling logic) kids like Shaman... I doubt many people take it seriously.

Its actualy interesting history for context, that rarely gets any light (in dicussions concentrated around more contemprary problems). Thing is, original backers were pretty much differently focused demography -- more "eve-like pvpers" (who wanted scale and depth, feedom of action) and people who desired to play metagame politics and political-like roleplay (strategic layer for competition). You can clearely see their hype and "nationbuilding" on older forum parts. Gradualy (for them and everyone else) it become painfully clear, that game has zero mechanics to support very large group gameplay they wanted (or it long years away). So they stared to abandon DU, even long before Beta. Ones who survived from this caterogy (ancient undead, @Lethys, per example) become bitterest critiques of NQ, because, speaking romanticly, it felt like betrayal. In meanwhile, centre of mass seriously shifted to more "landmark-like" players -- ones much more tolerant to game deficiencies, as long they were able do build something, travel in 3d space and, spend time with their machines and boxes to hoard stuff. Its mostly solo/small group/interest club type of players. NQ for most part embraced this demographic change and "downgrade" in scale of game, now concentraing their balancing effort between landmark-happy-village-people (to not discromfort them too much) and remaining small-scale-skirmish stubbornest pvpers (to give something to pewpew, but not too much and in very controlled fashion). This why asteroids made way they made (beyond purely technical aspect).

Actualy there is factual data NQ is unable to hide -- and way to know overal dynamics. Sancturary claims. They can be relativly reasonable metric on both new players/alts activity. At moment of 0.23 it was somehere around 35 k of them, now, haft of yeat later, around 40 k. So, there is obvious humble stream of new players, maybe even larger concurrent population, then in "darkest hour" bit before, but numbers still much lower, then in september and very low for such type of one shard mmo game to be "healthy".

Its not that effective in DU, as almost all other quantity limits, because people just use alts.

Poll is bit unrepresentative, because majority of voters -- current active old fans, who, like in DU, represented mostly by hardcore pve builders (also invites were with "invite friend" component). This formed specific demography slice. So, before Early Access they likely overpower any vote like this purely statisticly. Majority of later arriving population likely be more PvP inclined.

While its noble? idea, pretty naive too. Its not works like this. https://twitchtracker.com/games/493826 Main (and likely only) chance for to break current downfall spiral lies in NQ hands -- to accumulate a lot of genuine improvments, then do release with wipe and huge marketing push to restart whole system with large number of fresh people. Several dozens of fake likes not help anyone, in big picture especialy.

We suspecting/dicussing this sad state for years. As I see it, initialy, on forming NQ, JC (being JC) brough in a lot of totaly parasitic employees to have fun with them on meetings about next meetings (likely beloved JC activity to feel smart). Now, eating salaries for 7 (!) years now, conviniently doing absolutly nothing, these people totaly not want to go anywhere. They doing fine and likely adapted into new leadership or lack of it.

There is important context here. In ideal word we can imagine asteroid mining happening in some sort of asteroid field, where thousands of them floating, waiting to be found, scanned, minded, contested etc organic way, probably with some sort of respawn. Yet, NQ on course to minimize any voxel-changing mining (cost cutting), so they absolutly not want people doing a lot of such mining (that will totaly happen with actual huge asteroid belt, especialy, god forbid, with any ship-based mining tools). So they squezeed whole feature to this, where they can conrollably drop minimum ammount of entities, and activity with them produce minimum money leaking. So, yeah, its even whithout any pun, as said above, poor man solution. But I guess this will be now standard mode of desicion making.

Well, whole this with missions only tiny-tiny cap of proverbial iceberg. Game economy was completly dominated by exploiters for last 9 months (until previous large ban wave, that knocked out most serious dupers), with NQ not wanting (because reasons) or unable to interwene. I done quite a lot of my own wannabe journalistic "investigations" to be absolutly sure of it. People with endless (or immensly huge) hoards of free ore just traded it all the time, keeping prices artificialy low (this why some prices were suspiciously stable, despite obvious gradual ore dissapeareance on planets), gaining huge quanta profits, that they later traded RMT. I personaly knew 2 people who done it ~ 1000 and 1500 euro value accordingly, immense more or less "laundered" value still hidden/dispersed between individual alts or integrated into orgs assets, so NQ still can get them without too much of havoc/blacklash. Now, with some dupers banned (and some JUST keeping low profile) economy bursting into inflation, because ore is more or less trully finite now, and people got additional money from missions. So, from any sane standpoint, its shitshow of economy, extreamly shameful for developers as presumed professionals. This why I currently see very little reason to play until wipe.

Its also funny, that mission money spam (+banning, at last, people who for almost year traded with cheap exploit-gained goods, keeping prices low) now fire ups zimbabwe-like inflation. But exploit compoment was actualy more important. Dominated whole economy.

Doubt it. Game (so far) ended up as deep niche within niche, with very specific sort of players have long-term interest/patience to stay. And even much stronger overall titles struggle with attempts to go sub model. Realisticly, if feels like game will be financialy viable only with some mobile-level predatory monetization, whales milking beyond sub pay (if it even stay). Probably whole direction of changes is slow crawling to position for serious hitting of wallets of "hardcore" nerds.

Something that JC actualy done : )

Its already likely off the table, just as always with NQ sneak way. There is very thin realistic scenario, when they gonna "release" game in 22 (if it happen) with all legacy economic mess, exploiters-trillioinairs and so on.

Which is actualy fun (in bad way), because game practicaly empty and imagined to be played with x1000 more people and their activities around.

Not sure about marketing, but they obviously clearing field for both price cuts and future milking of people who will be ready to pay for advantages. ROI seems to be totaly out of reach by conventional means (demographicly), without said milking on very hardcore, abusive scale of mobile games.

This... but on side of loops: it seems like over all this 6 years no one actualy thought (until now?) how whole carnival with alts and multiple orgs and economic/in-game-political things heavily dependent on them can actualy work in meaningful, long term way. Shame NQ too small/irrelevant to be juicy target or Jason Schreier pissed his pants from revelations for sure.