le_souriceau

Careful this is unconstructive they will ban all of us by monday morning.

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...  
 

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...  
 

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...  
 

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...  
 

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...  
 

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...  
 

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.

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.  

Nobody was judging how buggy and lacking DU was in the beginning during pre-alpha.
But as the time went by and nothing really changed, it became obvious that DU/NQ was struggling. And having to watch NQ/JC put out rosy red tinted videos and doing interviews saying how great everything was going to be, while at the same time being completely silent in the so called "test forums" whenever anyone would ask hard questions. Well, it is the reason why the forums are what they are today..
 
And FB really has to mess things up to be the next NQ. I mean sure there are EA launch problems (still nothing compared to how much early DU tests struggled), but they also released a patch 1 day after launch with more fixes then what it would take NQ a month to do.
 

PvP is broken.
Flying dead cores, 100% misses, and a lot of other bugs.
How do you want us to test pvp balancing changes, if whole pvp aspect of the game is currently not working properly?

Lack of content From all appearances, upcoming content promised to suck. (And that's been born out as far as I can tell) I did install the updated game. Haven't bothered to log in yet. I might get there soonish.

Not playing, just waiting for the gravestone to pop up so I can put "Justice for scoopy served" on top of it for lulz.
 
Why I dumped it ?
Because the ones that build it have no idea what they are doing. Even if they pull their heads out of sand now, it is probably too late.
 
P.S:
Lol at that DekkarTV dude trying to say game is not dead. Even the discord chat is dead with just 3-4 people occasionally chatting.
Probably butthurt if he tries to get a streamer career but the title he chose has like 10 viewers at peak.

Hello all, I thought I would take the time to write up a summary of the events that led to the creation of Legion. For those unaware, Legion is a new pvp alliance formed from a group of former Ascendancy member orgs and as far as i know, Legion is the largest alliance in DU at the moment in terms of character count and fleet size.

The buildup to this mass exodus from AC was a long time coming. The first issue being an issue of many orgs in DU, afk leadership. AC was plagued with afk leaders and in a few cases entire organizations that had moved on to other games but did not step down from leadership or giving up their voting powers. These people would continue to vote on important issues and control the actions of the people who actually play the game. For example a vote was started in the AC to ban the shooting of ships in pvp space unless they shot first, effectively banning any control over space resources. This was voted on and decided by people who primarily didn’t play the game.

After months of only a small subset of AC players actually helping and contributing to the growth of the Alliance the catalyst for the departure was the announcement of asteroids. ATOM attempted to pass a vote requiring all AC orgs to participate in the defense of space assets. This vote ended up failing with the majority of the votes cast by players who no longer played the game or who never participated in the alliance in general.

Du has evolved from the beginning, while at first the only thing that mattered was the amount of people in your du community org, to building as a group because of a lack of a market, to single players being able to buy and build everything possible in the game. The game has changed from being a solo minecraft type game to a game where cooperation matters and more, specifically pvp Space matters. Having easy access to missions, the best way to make money in the game. To asteroids in space having the most valuable resources in the coming patch. Knowing who has your back, who will be there to help you without thinking, and who is in it only for themselves has become extremely important.

Legion was founded on these ideas. Getting access to the best income and resources in the game through pvp. Creating the largest fleet to ensure the safety of this income. Generating content to keep people engaged and playing. And generally improving our skill and members standing in the universe.

Signed,
Mulligan
Super legate of ATOM
Executive of Legion

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).
 

@NQ  At some point you will have to decide what kind of game you are making.  Are you making a creative mode game for people to build their sand castles?  If so, wipe nothing and you're pretty much done.
 
If you are still intent on making the game you advertised where the game is driven by large scale player interaction then you will have to wipe everything completely and you are going to have to make serious changes in the game.  Safe zones completely fly in the face of such a game.  Resources and territory ownership are things that should have to be defended.  The idea that major resources (mega-nodes for example) or prime real estate can be defended by a mere TU negates the need to form an org for defense or the need for orgs to interact through conflict or treaty to divide those resources.
 
If you want piracy then pirates need more tools to give options beyond the complete destruction of their targets.  This would make haulers more open to piracy if encounters didn't always lead to a total loss.  Piracy also needs to carry some in game consequences.  Without safe zones, the price of piracy is living on the run or forming large pirate alliances.  Now you can pillage a hauler and then camp safely in your base within the safe zone.  Also, elements should be not be repairable.  The idea that a small pirate ship can pirate a meganode worth of ore by simply field repairing a totally destroyed hauler is nonsense.  If a pirate org wants such a heist they need to decide either to attack as a group and bring their own hauler or only disable the target hauler and take it over.  At a certain point, total destruction should mean a total loss of the ship and cargo (this isn't possible in the current game).  

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.
 
 

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.

I would like to specifically address the issue of a wipe.
It will have positive and negative effects, I'm sure, but if we want to be fair, a general wipe would be good for the game at the start, because all players can start with the same conditions and nobody has an advantage. I myself have built hundreds of constructs, earned millions of quanta and extracted even more ores from the ground and still think a fair start to the game includes a wipe. I have used my time so far to report many bugs in the game to get the game in a better state, you can assume that I have invested a daily time of more than just a full time job. Would I miss my achievements? Of course! But it's a beta and the game and a fair system come before individual enrichment. Means a complete reset of captured areas, available ores, reset of all Quanta, the skill tree - in short: everything.
What I could imagine as "compensation" would be a "special" colouring of the avatar, so that one is recognised as an alpha beta tester. Possibly there could also be "magic blueprints" that get great constructs in the game - BUT these are granted without the voxels or elements contained in them. Meaning, the players can only place these constructions once they have collected the material for them again. Remember - it's to stay fair for our gaming community, any voxel or advanced engine would be a huge advantage and only gives opportunities to cheat on top of that.
Why the reset at all? Because new players can't even manage to catch up in the current game and its progress. they would simply skip many Tier-levels and destroy the value of them. Likewise, there is currently a huge quanta glut due to testing out the missions, which have simply created a huge imbalance in the economic system. New players couldn't compete with this, couldn't even come close to surviving, because players already have billions in reserves to influence and control the market.
So if you really want a fair game, you should support a wipe. But those who are only interested in maintaining their own power will certainly decide against it. No matter what you decide, it is and remains a beta and the goal should be to find bugs and make improvements to bring the game into a great future. The alpha/beta should not be used to enrich oneself by exploiting bugs.
 

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).
 

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).
 

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".