le_souriceau

TLDR at the bottom...

I have supported in excess of $20,000 worth of kickstarters and Indiegogos etc. over the last decade. And every one has to some extent delivered on their promises.  VR headsets, electric bikes, pocket sized computers, kitchen knives (don’t ask), retro camera lenses, ED, SC and DU included. 
 
During that time, I have managed to refund -before the grace period expired - over $3000 worth of projects, nearly all of which have still not delivered or are now defunct. 
 
I’m not claiming to be a crowdfunding Guru or anything like that, I think I have a reasonably good judgement when it comes to the reality of project definitions and their scope.
 
of all the projects, Star Citizen and DU were the two I was most on the fence about, heck I was even skeptical about ED.  Their scope and scale were more ambitious than anything else I backed and I ummed and ahhed for a long time before backing them all. 
 
Let’s have a look at their status:
 
ED released a playable game, and came out of alpha in a timely fashion. Bugs -initially- were squashed in a timely fashion and new features were released for the first two years thereafter at a fair clip. Moreover, a number exploited bugs were rapidly quashed and announcement of quashing was made just before they did so, essentially giving all the players a little bit of time to.. ahem... "test" the bugs out and report.  In one particular case, I do remember that they actually rolled back accounts that had exploited a major cash making bug.
 
but then for three years, the game has lain in slumber with unfixed bugs, and a large number of their placeholder temporary mechanics becoming permanent features and early 2012 statements by David Braben such as damage model, ship interiors, scavenging and walking about, nowhere to be seen. 
 
moreover, nearly all the community facing content disappeared for two years, as did communication from within. 
 
And despite having tens of thousands of daily players according to third party plugin API data, their forums are a bit of a bitch fest aimed at FDEV. 
 
Still, as of this year, much of the community activities and storyline suddenly rose from the dead, and communication about the future restarted in a major way and yesterday, a new DLC, Odyssey claiming to be the biggest paradigm shift and overall update in the game to date, moved into open beta and should address much of the EVA deficits.
  
Ambition: 7/10
Communication: 5/10-now 7/10
enjoyability : from 5/10 to 8/10
Delivery: 7/10 (soon to be 8?)

Star Citizen. 
 
yeah.. ok.. I know people get their knickers in a twist about this one so I’m gonna try and stay objective. Lol.
 
Suffice it to say that their saving grace is their incredible and endless communication with the players. 
 
Their intentions are made clear, they respond to the community to an extent, are delivering quarterly updates, their (fluidly shifting!!) roadmap is usually current and their rate of progress this last 12 months has finally 
reached something acceptable considering their epic and continually increasing budget. 
 
but the game is still a beautiful, beautiful bugfest . 

Ambition: 11/10
Communication: 10/10
Enjoyability: 4/10 to 6/10 (T pose mayhem, etc)
Delivery: 5/10 , soon to be 6? With first extra system and stargates finally making an appearance. 
 
We all know about DU so no need to go into detail. 
 
Ambition: 11/10
(I still don’t think there is technology capable of delivering their dream in a realistic way.)
 
Communication:  4/10 and declining rapidly. 
(it was never very good yet now it’s all but nonexistent)
Enjoyability: 2 or 3/10 PvP, 7 or 8 / 10 Creatives. 
Delivery: 4/10
most of the basic systems are in but a lot of the initial goals have evaporated.

Basically, DU is in the worst place of the three major kickstarters and is showing the most signs of a project out of control and in freefall.
 
Now here is the interesting bit about the forums:
 
the ED forums, due to FDEV’s recent activity, are fairly lively and the vitriol is directed between the PvP meta players, griefing, grinding and the rest of the PvE players. 
there is solid PvE play. 
 
the SC forums, due to CGI’s constant activity, are fairly lively and the vitriol is directed between the PvP meta players, so called griefing and the rest of the PvE players and also chatter about the various game breaking bugs. 
there are solid PvE 
 
Now we have the DU forums. 
 
the DU forums, due to NQ’s lack of activity, are mostly defunct apart from the ten or so of us who still comment.  and the vitriol is directed between the PvP meta players, griefers, exploiters, the devs, each other and basically anyone...  there are almost no solid PvE loops.  There is very little actual discussion about the game at all any more, because there is little to nothing to discuss.
 
it seems to me that vitriol is directly a result of the lack of communication from upstairs. 
 
the other two projects appear (recently at least)  to have a strong indication of direction and clarity of progression that is lacking in this project and in the idle gaps, dissatisfaction breeds.  The other two games' forums are fairly pleasant, recently, a far brighter and more positive outlook than a year or so ago.


TLDR here:

 
I do believe that DU can still be saved from oblivion if they sort out some of the ridiculous mechanics that they have foisted on the players and deliver on a few more of their promises.
First, DU needs to get its focus back and NQ need to start communicating more clearly to bring back confidence among the player base.
 
PLAYER driven markets and player owned markets must become a reality, not bot driven: bots running markets, bots selling schematics, bots buying ores... These are absoloutely bullshit and need to go.
 
LAG FREE, Bug free, dynamic and exciting PvP. This is an absolute MUST if the game is to survive. (hell, I'm not a PvPer but this is f'ckn obvious since it was sold front and centre before the "Balpha" rolled out.)

Performance: The game is really not optimised currently and with graphics cards being $2000+ for anything above toy level,  the game is going to have to get its shit together, especially around markets.
 
I’d hate this to be the first failed project among all of my crowdfunding....

- I look at the 0.24 changelog and what's new since 0.23 from autumn.
- Then I realise that this company has 2 studios
- Again I then look at the picture I posted: 
 
And then I ask if this is a early April Fool's joke.
But we've already had the discussion and explanations, I'll save the words here.
 
It is a pity for the transparency of the communication that we find things where one wonders who introduced these ideas. 
I have no idea who the game designer is at NovaQuark now, because it's so opaque by now and I don't have a name. With other mmorpg you know who is working on what.

Schems, to be fair, only drammaticly accelerated collapse of whole thing.
 
If you imagine for a moment that 0.23 never happened, does it (honestly) makes game anymore fundamentaly fun? No. People just be getting exausted and quiting slower and with less bitterness. Because beyond stuff NQ stolen from us (by locking away with ransom) with 0.23, there is still no good content generating mechanics. Game is pretty sterile (in some aspects -- blatant tech demo) beyond building.
 
 
 
 
 

DU is not vaporware, obviously.
 
But, sadly, with every passing week (and people taking "breaks" or quiting), it feels less and less salvagable. Population dynamics is utterly unforgiving for MMOs, especialy with one shard idea. Well known competitor likely outpace ever slugginsh NQ with Release vs PvP update (may), making things even worse and comparisons even more mocking.
 
 

Schems, to be fair, only drammaticly accelerated collapse of whole thing.
 
If you imagine for a moment that 0.23 never happened, does it (honestly) makes game anymore fundamentaly fun? No. People just be getting exausted and quiting slower and with less bitterness. Because beyond stuff NQ stolen from us (by locking away with ransom) with 0.23, there is still no good content generating mechanics. Game is pretty sterile (in some aspects -- blatant tech demo) beyond building.
 
 
 
 
 

The game looks pretty bad, always has. It can't really get better because performance is always going to be an issue. The game runs bad and there are hardly any players in there, compared to what they say it should be able to handle.
Overall DU is great in promise and low in delivery. The idea behind the game had most block building space fans drooling when first announced. But I think most have realised that the worry about performance etc, at the beginning that we all thought about, is showing itself to be the biggest issue they are going to have and probably, as many players thought at the time, they are not going to win that battle.

Btw, people people (who not in terminal stage of DU-induced gangrene) may try to find attempt of salvation here:
 
https://mmopress.wixsite.com/newmeroviachronicle/post/utopia-be-sure-to-wear-flowers-in-your-hair
 
(shameless advert)

Btw, people people (who not in terminal stage of DU-induced gangrene) may try to find attempt of salvation here:
 
https://mmopress.wixsite.com/newmeroviachronicle/post/utopia-be-sure-to-wear-flowers-in-your-hair
 
(shameless advert)

I sometimes envy NQ twitter man how such low-effort work still getting him monthly paycheck.

Its classic statistical manipulation.  As my college stat teacher said:  "Lies, Damm Lies, and Statistics".
 
This is just like going to a Corvette club and asking "How many of you like Corvettes?".  By forcing people into the game to do the survey, instead of in the launcher or on the forum with an e-mail link (best of the options in my opinion), they solicited those still playing and ask if they like the game - huge bias.  Of course, as mentioned above, if they did it on the forum the results would likely be public - and that don't want that.
 
They have the data - why not do a number of surveys focusing on people that played less than 10 hours, 10 to 100 hours, 100 to 1000 hours, 1000+ hours based on connect time of the account?  THAT would be useful data.

So they want even the people who dont even play anymore, to "login" so they can post a 1.   Because thats what I did.  Now they can use that to show a boosted number of "logins" for someone....their financial backers?  And to me this doesn't mean shit if I can't see what the results are.   I have a feeling we will never see what the results are of this survey.

Besides it being really not great to force a survey on your player base through the game, please learn how NPS works..
 

 
 
Someone scoring 1-6 is a detractor, 7 or 8 are neutral and 9 or 10 are promotors .. 
 
So if you want to get your NPS score correctly, do not put NEUTRAL under the 5-6 as :
You will likely trigger a lot of those scores and thus trigger detractors You will imply a 7 or 8 is good which it really is not  
 
BTW. .if anyone wants to know.. NPS (Net Promotor Score) is what is measured here. the score will be:
 
((number of promotors-number of detractors)/total number of scores)*100
 
So neutrals are not good as they will actually lower your score 
 
If you want to do NPS.. At least do it correctly..
But then, NQ may not even be aware of this and just use the format without understanding how this works.. Would not really surprise me..
 

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?!
 

From patch notes:
Metal structures are allways coated with paint or electroplating or similar coating.
 
We had no paint tool. But material did represent nice and interesting colors as well as in some cases electroplated metals. So we were able to create illusions of something more what game was allowing.
 
@NQ:
 
So you decided that using materials creative way were not intended way to play this game also and took it away.
 
At same time you wiped hundreds of hours of creative work form builders.
 
I agreed that this is beta, but play hours are not.
 
Time spent playing is our own time in real world. And it is not infinite for us. Please stop wasting our limited time in real life. My life (what is left of it) is too short for this.
 
 

The exception doesn't prove the rule. 99% of the people who play DU or give a try will look at YouTube and twitch before any forum.  Ask around.  When looking to play a new game I use word of mouth of friends from gaming communities, watch YouTube, and check out streams.  The "community" is the last thing I would look at, and 99% never look at. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

The new ambient light is a terrible idea. We've lost any ability to create 'dark' areas. The 'dark seedy understation' on Utopia is now just an overexposed nightmare. It looks like Todd Howard showed up, told everyone that the dark is scary and now we've just got this permanent dusk at night.
 
Areas that are completely hidden from the sun are no longer dark. No doubt this has ruined countless builds.
 
If you're having trouble with light on planets or underground, fine.. but why bork up the shadows on constructs? Quite honestly, the lighting on the constructs was the best in the game, and now it's just Fortnite. Space is dark.. that's the thing about the absence of light.... it's dark.

I saw Ivan online today, things cant be that bad.

Oh, the irony..