le_souriceau

As I indicated on Tuesday, here is the roadmap for the year and the next 2 months. The date for 29 July (next week) has also been confirmed for early access.
 

 

NQ intention:
Asteroids that will be risk vs reward as you fight for the control of the tier 5 asteroids !
 
Reality:
T1 trashcan ship with 100 alts crashes on the tier5 asteroid. Alts start troll mining T5 into their backpacks jetpacking away and logging off when full. 3 battleships that came to pvp watching helplessly unable to do anything to them.
When the dust settles down alt extraction (another trashcan this time with a warp drive) arrives to take them back home.
 
NQ: "We will investigate..." (and may or may not do anything about it in 6 month)
 
There is that profession. Game Design.

According to some white knights ( @DekkarTV) the servers are packing with players. 

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. 
 
 

The "red arrow" is in typical NQ fashion a poor mans version of territory war.
Quick and easy to implement, but riddled with balancing issues. Just the kind of solution NQ loves..
 
A: You are going to have to use resources finding and scanning the asteroids, mine the resources within a time limit and then transport ore while protecting yourself from attacks.
B: Just sit back and wait for the notification on where you should attack.

Lie my ass off about improving the game until the first paycheck. Take the money, assuming its enough, buy a plane ticket to my next job interview to work on project that isnt hopeless.

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

I think ROI from an investor's perspective is years away and may never happen if NQ does not take drastic measures. I read the single announcement around the CEO change and while it is at best vague and as it turns out not entirely truthful as JC actually left the company entirely from what I understand Pann posted on Discord, it says (but are they?) the investors are in it for the long haul. Problem is the 22M NQ collected from them is probably gone by now so new funding is needed.

The introduction of energy management is actually good for the game as a whole but the issue I see is that NQ is pretty much in a development cycle which is far more based on an Alpha state of game dev than beta which they labelled the game as. Making deep and sweeping changes like they are really has no place in beta. I gave the whole energy thing some thought and I do not really see how they are going to introduce that without either forcing massive moves by org to be able to to continue their level of operation or (partially) wipe. Reducing the core count for orgs may also be a prelude to the energy introduction and result in both cost reduction on the server side as well as orgs reverting core ownership which then makes a move easier once energy comes in.

The thing I guess is that their could well be an actual plan behind all this but with NQ not really being as open and transparent as I think they should be (and really claimed they would be). Both energy and power management will have respective massive impact on static and dynamic construct application in many ways. It will be interesting to see how NQ will handle this as it is very easy to see a number of ways in which they can bork the introduction of these like they did with schematics while any of these mechanics by themselves are actually good ones.
 
I've been back in the game for a week or two now and it's just unfortunate that DU has not actually progressed beyond "having a lot of potential" for well over a year now, as I would really have preferred to start seeing some of that potential become a reality or at least be a solid light at the end of the tunnel. I remember the jolt of lightning the voxel meshing was when it arrived little over a year ago, it relit the flame for many of us as it showed an instant leap forward in a big way. from there however it feels like all that NQ has been doing is add "pretty" and frankly overdoing most of it (what's with all the VFX now.. it is massively distracting and out of place in the overall design), changes to cut cost as server expenses went through the roof and very little substance.

As it stands, I'll probably set the game aside again, hoping it gets better over the next year or so.

I think we'll see many more restrictions...
 
The reason they are doing these restrictions is because they want to start another marketing push and get more players into the game...and only now have they started to consider product cost and ROI. 
 
They can't justify a new marketing push if costs aren't kept under control, hence restrictions.
 
Cost is complicated because most players they acquire via paid marketing churn early on...and the few people that stay tend to build a lot...so the limits might still be too generous, but I think they are banking on new users having less churn than they did when open 'beta' first launched. 
 
Here's what I see happening...
 
- NQ introduces more restrictions (like Zarcata said, the energy system) to try to further reduce the cost/scale of 'hardcore builder' types
- NQ revamps / removes tutorials because they've never worked right -- does a few small things to help first time user experience 
- NQ does another marketing push to hype the game, gets another crop of new players. It works very well because DU is easy to advertise with flashy videos that don't match reality
- New players have almost exactly as much churn as they did in open beta...Ultimately (as the OP says), very little has changed since then. The few things they've added in the last 7 months won't be enough to improve churn (IMO) and the expectations set with adverts won't be met
- Likely: same wave of optimism followed by crushing sadness as NQ gets a crop of new players, but they churn after a few months...more drastic company or product changes as they consider the next steps 
 

Well, the problem is not so much that they do this, the problem is they do this now with it being a feature from day 1 community page till few days ago. Ofc. they can do this but to keep the option to make a lot of orgs open for years and years and then after rdms and properties and everything is incorporated, orgs are building up, organizing etc etc, Then you come with this BS just to Again stop the few abusers and still dont act against abuse but hurt all others.
Its abit the same as when you give the whole class an ice cream but they need to stand in a row, now one asshole kid stand at the beginning and then leaves the row and joins in the rear to get a second icecream. Now the teachers see that and they smack 1 icecream from everyones hands, and say its fair. In the end only the asshole got 1 icecream, the rest ice on their shoes. Thats the way NQ solves issues

DU was created by an academic with no experience in the field -- so it isn't that surprising it was built with a lot of half-baked, experimental ideas...but not backed by a robust technical core that could actually scale in the real world (even with relatively small pops). 

The DU site says "build almost anything" like "cities", but they never actually planned the tech around supporting this at any meaningful scale. They saw that something could work in an early prototype and declared proudly that their "cutting edge tech" would work at the most extreme scales...without ever really testing it or optimizing for it. 

I think NQ is going to implement even more restrictions because they want to start ramping up marketing again.
 
They probably believe that the last few updates have improved the game enough that their churn rates will be much improved relative to open beta...but to ramp up marketing, they need to be sure that costs are cheaper per player and that scaling out servers nets them a profit and not even more loss. 
 
I very much doubt that they'll be happy with their churn rates if that's the plan...

So, popped in to see if anything new was released and don't find anything of real worth.  No mission system.  No PvP work.  No nothing but a few re-colors of existing assets. 
 
Have all the programmers quit? 
 
 

Yes there here are the problem.
Currently there is an arms race because the people who are still in the game and who PvP are among the most active in the game.
 
Ships with indecent amounts of elements and voxels are released in PvP fleets every day.
 
Solo or multi-crew ships have several tens of millions of quanta (see hundreds if you take market prices).
 
So yes it takes an investment to enter PvP. And there is nothing to gain from it.
 
A player who wants to go out cannot even afford a small ship, as the ship design does not suffer from any limitations.
For something low cost you will just get annihilated, obliterate, disintegrate, choose the adjective that suits you best ...
 
In a balanced game, you could buy 2 or 3 small S combat ships with your 5 million (a ship with a series of S and M elements and at least a thousand voxels of fuel and ammunition armor included).
 
Except the game is broken, do you want to get out?
- You would need all the items in size L or XL, and at least 30 times larger.
 
Welcome to Dual Universe Unlimited building ship with no sense of balancing.

Seems like they back to rectuitment to compensate stream of run-away people.
 
2 weeks ago it was DevOps Eng (oouch), now is Level Disign Scripter (?)..
https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/companies/novaquark/jobs/level-design-scripter_montreal
 
Overall it means (I think) Nick not closing shop yet (as some more drammatic people here suspect). Extent of painful road ahead and what changes game will experience quite unclear tho.
 
P.S.
 
Their own info on this site states they have 94 empoyees. So all this narrative about "small indie studio, that can't spare a man for anything" sounds a bit cringe.

Originally, early access should have started last November / December. Since all tools and engines are developed in-house, I have no doubt that they know what they are doing. 
 
They are very down to earth, have always communicated excellently. As I am in closed alpha, I have also always been pleased to be able to show things as they are in the game, as there was no NDA. 
 
I expect there will be a big rush in June. I'll give a real conclusion after 2 weeks. But since they don't overhype things like No Man Sky, I see no reason for it to be bad. Everything they've shown in videos, as well as the weekly stress tests, have done the job. Whether the servers will last, I don't know. But the gameplay scenes shown can definitely be experienced.
 
And if things don't go as they should, they're more likely to be forgiven in their persistently community -> thanks to their superb communication over the last 2 years.
 

Definitely not surprised regarding the OP's statement, why?
 
Let's go back to 0.23 release when the **** really hit the fan in my opinion.
 
So 0.23 saw the release of schematics and the reception to these changes were lukewarm at best.
 
The issue was never really the schematics, the vast majority of players understood and even welcomed the addition of schematics as an IDEA.
 
The implementation of the idea though was fedback as being awful, the first issue was with the prices of the schematics, in response NQ eventually lowered the prices of schematics but this was really just a bandaid, likewise the increase on the daily quanta bonus is a bandaid along with the bot buy orders.
 
It was at this point the game forced mining on players not just to get materials to build things with but to essentially grind massive amounts of quanta for schematics - I have mined just over 1 billion quanta worth of ore whilst watching 3 series including SG1, ST: DS9 and SG:Atlantis (hint this mining sim is not fun or engaging).
 
Prior to this players could get away with doing far less mining and could focus on building or coding but by making this change players must now exhaust their time doing something that just isn't fun at all.
 
NQ reasoned that with the addition of the increased daily reward and the doubling of bot buy orders of ore this would provide players a way to progress in the short term.

That isn't what has happened though is it? Instead 7 or so months later we are practically in the same situation as we were back then, what else has been done in that time? 

1. bug fixes
2. performance improvements
 
arguably this is it, from a feature perspective nothing of real value has been added at the time of writing this post.

So what is my point? Simple really, whilst it may be true that 0.23 was a pretty awful thing to add before other play loops were added that isn't really the root issue here.

The root issue is that NQ kept the game in this post .23 state for close to 3/4 of a year, you tell me if they should be surprised that people are fed up after being promised a space game and instead receiving a mining simulator.
 
That's not even the sole big issue though, the other problem is that the communication attempts from NQ are just straight up bad (this is an understatement of epic proportions), we have no timeline, no idea on the state of the company at all (leaving many to speculate) or the future of the game in terms of whether it is going to die due to lack of funding, to add salt to the proverbial wound we get placations in the form of blogs giving us grandiose plans for how NQ has heard our feedback, or how they are going to refactor their processes etc etc in the form of blogs in various parts. 

All of it is just BS, no one wants talk anymore, action action action is what we want.

Sooo for me the game is boring because: 

1. it is a mining sim where you get to play a peasant for a good month or so.
2. the dev loop is unbearably slow, feels like NQ are still trying to ride the rapids of the waterfall rather than moving to a more agile method, I have found this generally happens because deployments are hard or the code isn't as malleable as it should be or a bit of both; this worries me.
3. no idea what the future of DU is so should I grind loads of quanta in the hope it is a success and it becomes fun, bascially allowing me to get a leg up; i expect many people who play relentelessly these days do so in the hope that they will be able to benefit when/if the game becomes fully featured.
4. at this point I don't trust NQ, would not surprise me if they perform a wipe.
5. communication is bad and roadmaps are not a thing so no reason to expect anything.
6. I have had enough of interacting with bots, the whole point of this game is to build the universe with players which isn't what is happening, whole swathes of player made content are removed from the game by allowing players to sell to bots, hauling isn't a thing (at least not to the level it should be), building on other planets isn't a thing because no one knows what the mechanics of TW will be.
 
reduced down to 2 points it is boring because it involves too much mining (if it was SE like mining i would actually find it fun ish) in tunnels with a uninspriing hand tool and no gameplay even around mining and no changes to this in site.

.

If they drasticly impove quality of product, then sustainable income kinda... squeezable from relativly small, but super dedicated population. Not pretty, but somewhat realistic way, ol good pay 4 win and heavy whale hunt.
 
1) Raise of sub cost (like 12$).
2) Agressive alt milking (so serious number of people paying x3-x4 and more).
3) Most importantly, not only cosmetics shop, all sort of boosters and other expensive desired crap.
4) Good sales of DACs to the pile.
 
 
 

You hilariously late (at least year or so) with your suggestions/feedback. Not like anyone cared about feedback before, but at it was more relevant to post/argue about. Currently its about 100% survival/MVP -- they at best do what they can, not what you want.
 
Where you been all that time?
 
 
 
 

The game has not changed much since some alpha version a d NOW you conclude it's boring after 4 months? Been that way for at least 2 years xD