le_souriceau

Yeah, it seems like JC/NQ completly nod understand how "cities" in games work (still endlessly putting up front as game feature). I even suspect they never played game where it was the working case.

I consider this my area of expertise (SADLY), because I spent long years in MC as player/gm/cm/events guy/admin and everything in between. And people were trying to build "cities" (collective habitats so to say) all the time in all ways possible. Its relativly worked, when beefed up with enough support systems (useful logistics, working economy, pvp dangers, social mods to spice collective things) -- that generated actual reasons to regulary congregate -- failed in other cases. I dare say I know if not everything, but awful lot about this mechanics and player behaivors/interction patterns. 

Yet, obviously there is no way I can meaningfully translate even bit of my experience into feedback/ideas/things loop NQ established currently. So I kinda given up on being good feedbacking guy and gone rogue.

I updated the first post on the thread as I entirely forgot the big one and main course for he patch next to the missions system.. The Creative mode instance
 
NQ will follow their usual pattern so here's my prediction:
Devblog 1: Mission System (28-01)
Devblog 2: Org Wallets (10-02)
Devblog 3: The "major change" to the way jetpacks work in space (19-02)
Devblog 4: PTS and new textures/assets using Quixel and Speedtree (end Feb)
Devblog 5: Linked container range nerf and the Creative mode instance (first week March)
 
"AMA/Q&A" session stream with JC (second/third week March)
 
0.24 patch set to release 24/25 March ..
 
--==--
 
And while we're at at it..
 
Next up end of June:
PVP revamp Power/Energy management Asteroid mining Mining units  
Then, late September (and yes, I fully expect a wipe for this patch)
Territory Warfare (safezones around outer planets goes away) Player Markets Avatar customization Stargates and a new solar system with improved biomes The new system will have one safezone planet with it's moons, I expect NQ will place the gate to and from that system in the safezones on either side "for now".
 
 
 
Lastly, the "release" patch early/halfway through December: 
2nd iteration of the Mission system Pets Vertex Editor Possibly a Market API

As it stands now, and the future, why is there a reason to have cities in the safe zone?  I see hardly any purpose.  Flying around a planet is easy if you have played the game longer than 1 month.  Why group up?  What benefits besides a couple friends living together?  You cant say for markets, because their are no players markets, and even if/when they come, you wont have hundreds of them on 1 planet.   There needs to be buyers for markets to work.  So again, WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE GO LIVE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S CITY LAND?  There are no mechanics for it.  If they want a civilization building game, they need to make it so not everyone can drop a TU down or a static construct, and Rez nodes be POWERFUL things, that dont go on dynamic constructs, and where you live can determine where you respawn.  Stuff of that nature.  I see nothing in the works where people would congregate in a city in a safe zone coming anytime soon, if ever.  At least with the pvp zone, it can be the "safety in numbers" and turn a normal hostile pvp zone planet into a "relatively safe area" as it would take weeks/months of war to seige a huge area with hundreds of territories connected.  This is why we need to reduce the safe zones down to only Alioth + sanc, and rework how contructs/TCU's/and Resurrection nodes are deployed.
 
They already talked about power management of tiles.  They need to completely rework how Resurrections nodes work.  For one, remove them from Dynamic constructs.  You die, you die, go back to your "city".  How many active rez nodes should be determined by the tile, and how many connected can increase that.  1 single tile should not support more than say 5(or whatever is balanced) people tied to that rez node.  The more connected tiles, the more that increases.  Now you have city areas start to form.  There needs to be major benefits to building together.  

and we got it because people that had 0 experience in PVP cried that "xs cores are overpowered" so they got double nerfed(guns + lock range). Now they will cry it's too expensive to get into pvp...
The current combat is 2 twitch streamers taking S cores and shooting each other 50km away from safezone "until first blood" and calling it PVP in a sandbox game or the one you explained. Don't know which is more stupid/boring.
 
It's not only the game design that is lacking, it's the whole approach that is conceptually inconsistent.
 
NQ appeals to the casual players so they make safezones all around so casuals don't get blown up by hardcore PVP players but then NQ turn casuals off by forcing them to fly 30min each time they want to move anywhere (30min flying is only fun for the first couple of times, then it's just staring at the screen). Let alone that casuals have to stare at expanding circle for hours to mine enough to be able to fly anything decent.
 
NQ appeals to the hardcore PVP players but then gets them bored af because there is literally 0 risk vs reward factor. There is no kills in PVP unless pirating, there is 0 reason to fight anyone and if you do you just both lose resources and that's all.
 
I think JC was thinking that making a "sandbox game" is a magic that makes the game work on it's own. He didn't know that you need a very good box and a lot of sand for that to work let alone know EXACTLY what you trying to achieve beforehand.

I feel people saying "hah you leave because of Discord" just do not understand how much Moco invested himself into making the largest community-then-official server a fluid and collegial option of communication for the whole playerbase of Dual Universe, of communication with themselves and with NQ.
 
Yama started it, but Moco made it go on despite the tremendous conditions and stakes, and some opportunities he created were not given the chance to blossom.
 
As a Discord mod and a Novean, I understand his decision but I'll miss him.

A classic case of vision getting in the way of good game design (also known as fun). This is a post about what civilization is / can be in Dual Universe, and perhaps what went wrong. Before diving in, here are some of my assumptions:
 - JC is a scientist, not a game designer
 - JC is a micromanager
 - JC does not want to listen to his devs (some of which worked for Ubisoft and know a thing or two about good game design and mechanics)
 - Because of the assumption above, I also assume there's a degree of conflict between devs and JC
 - I assume a lot might change up to release since this is a beta, but something tells me... not really, given the track record so far of very good ideas being thrown away or not listened to (classic examples include bot market orders screwup in beta, this was talked about extensively by Blazemonger and a slew of other people in the community, was completely ignored, and the results are clear)

Lets get the whole "but it's a beta" shtick out of the way... if you can't, just pretend that you can.
 
To the point:

The game suffers from very bad game design choices. My stance is, if this game was really about civilization building, the mechanics of the game would be very different than they are now. What is civilization?
organization of individuals into social bodies due to selective pressures characteristics of civilization include: social structure and hierarchy, efficiency, work organization, supply of needs, development of more efficient technologies selective pressures that create civilization include, but are not limited to: resource shortage, non-uniform resource distribution, geography, weather, proximity to neighboring civilizations, war, dangerous environment, dangerous neighbors  
I'm sure a lot of you have seen (or were part of groups that tried to build) cities in DU. Some have actually done so. The problem is, they are completely useless and empty. They look nice, there was tremendous effort in making them, but they are completely nonfunctional because no one needs to be in a city. And that is due to the fact that there really are no selective pressures for civilization at all. There is no reason to be in a group because there is no danger. There is no scarcity of distribution of regular ore. We have safezones on all planets, and a big giant safezone around three planets. Why would anyone live in a city? There are no "white-collar" and "service" game mechanics that characterize cities.
DU has no danger element at all (even in pvp zone, if you don't fly in the pipe, you're pretty much golden) DU has no progressive tech tree DU has no progression, it has quanta gates for elements that anyone can acquire and use given they have the quanta for it I can go on, but for an analysis of "civilization" just read this discord post: https://discord.com/channels/184691218184273920/304455542162587649/80629454165311491
I know this is wishful thinking at this point, but DU would be much better off with actual game design:
Better Talent System: scrap the Eve talents system (some things should really not be copied), instead have a tech progression tree where you unlock technologies you can use. And have the skill grow based on your activity in the game, not a set amount of points per hour. It's gamey , it's simple, it's fun, it's very intuitive. And you can always add more tech to the tree indefinitely as the game grows. This will allow whole orgs to gravitate towards a direction in the tech tree so we actually get diversity in org playing styles. For example, one org can develop their pvp armadas with ballistics (machine guns, gattling guns, big bertha weapons), another org might focus their armada pvp tech research into laser or electonic warfare. The same can go with unlocking building technologies. The same can go for politics and leadership styles within an org. Have it all be a research tree. There are countless ways of adding diversity and different paths to a game using this mechanic instead of the Eve Talent Points system. Safe Zones: seriously.. is Sanc Moon not enough? The game lacks any danger and people just stop playing because of tedium and burn out. You won't believe how hard it is to convince people to gather into PVP events in this game because they're just too bored of it, it has zero consequence. Sanc moon is a sanctuary moon. That is its purpose. Better Consequences: This game has the wrong consequences. What seems to be happening is a bunch of nerfing to create more consequences in the game, such as talk about nerfing linked container distance, brakes, mining, this whole permadamage to elements, etc. How about actual danger, not the tedium of fixing and replacing parts? How about lowering the cost of building guns and ammo? Halfing most of the voxel HP? How about designing the game so that more people can get into pvp easier, and if they lose, the cost isn't too great that they are discouraged from ever trying it again? JC should actually listen to his devs and game designer (if he has one): lets face it, economists, mathmeticians, scientists, or whoever NQ may or may not consult about their game.. they are not playing the game. WE ARE. What we are witnessing is the result of the disconnect between how gamers play and how JC thinks a game should run. And it is our wallets that are paying. This means JC should listen to his devs. This means JC should really hire a game designer, they are a rare species and it's difficult to find a good one, but if you do, please listen to that person. JC may know stuff about robotics, but as I see it, he has no clue about human psychology, especially gamer psychology.
My rant is over. Catch me outside how bout dat.

Still, visit us from time to time or something.
 
With every vet quitting on such, to be honest, negative note... saddens me a lot. Obviously we all have different relations (sometimes quite tense), expectations from game, views on NQ, but still we are (or were) quite special community united in dreams. Missing people from such colourful band, that formed over years, feels as unrecoverable losses.

And then.. suddenly.. the lights go out and there is no more servers.. And some will look around wondering what happened and how the never saw it coming.
 
There is one major difference between a game's community and "sociologists, economists, professional writers" .. one of these pay the bills, the other are the bills..
 

Sup DUveans,

Just stopping by here to say my final farewell to everyone here, in discord, and in game that I had the privilege to be acquainted with or some, to even call friends. 

I had a blast being along side everyone of you these past 7 years, watching this community grow from literally 0 members to a whopping 50,000+ of you. I had many fond memories building premature alliances, making in game hostile moves, watching orgs rise and fall, overall, nerding-out over every aspect of Dual Universe.

However, all good things must come to an end. I'm sad to say but due to recent announcements and the overall direction of community aspect of Dual Universe is partaking, per say, I must state my farewell from the community and Dual Universe completely (as a player and as Moderator, in Discord and other platforms). At this point, I'm not enjoying being part of a community that's not being nourished at its fullest or been ignored for so long. (That's just the tip of the iceberg) Regardless, I leave on good terms, hope you all have fun, wishing the best to everyone and Novaquark (Here's hoping for a fast recovery, community-wise) 


As always,
Catch everyone on the flip, but most importantly; Have Fun!

Remember: Comfort: is the enemy of progress
 
o7

Worst part, that even this forum/discord arguments about situation feel so meaningless...
 
Same people just repeating all same story how everything is not right and what NQ should do in ideal world (me included). Other same people repeating (to counter first part indeed) all over again same story of "this is beta", "give devs some time", "all is fine, I'm enjoying the game". Somewhere in middle personal fights ignite (because nothing new to add anyway). At this point I generaly even know names, that will be involved and roughly what they will say and how interact with each other.
 
I feel like we all prisoners of some cursed dark forest of something, just making endless rounds trying to find exit and fighting each other because of evil enchantment.
 
 
 
 

It is Saturday and since I am not spending any time playing DU, I decided I might as well kill some time doing more research.
This time I looked at high profile hires, and it is not looking good. And since these where published in the news, I can use names.
 
- Dual Universe Adds EVE Online’s Hrafnkell Oskarsson
Linkedin: Mar 2018 – Oct 2018, Employment Duration 8 mos
 
- Dual Universe developer christens new Montreal studio opening by hiring former Eidos executive Stéphane D'Astous
Linkedin: Feb 2019 – Sep 2020, Employment Duration 1 yr 8 mos
 
- Dual Universe developer Novaquark hire former CCP Technical Director as new CTO
Linkedin: Nov 2019 – Sep 2020, Employment Duration 11 mos

M-F only ? Wow , I like how they dressed it up to be some sort of positive change, that was cute.
 
Theories ? They are so short on cash now they can't afford GM's ? 
 
24/7 MMO and their support is only going to be availible M-F ? How long till this forum is pulled down in favor of 'in game periodic surveys' , to complete their disconnect from the community?
 
0.24 appears to be just mission system and wallet and PTS. While this if it's final form is not barebones is not indicative of the end times, it certainly calls into question if this team has any hope of completing their roadmap objectives for this year.
 
In the meantime people are apparently able to keep playing even if they don't pay.
 
None of the events of the past 2 months from NQ gives anyone any confidence, I'm not surprising people are leaving. This is just yet another example of either desperation , cash flow problems, or complete lack of proper business practices. 
 
  

Still, visit us from time to time or something.
 
With every vet quitting on such, to be honest, negative note... saddens me a lot. Obviously we all have different relations (sometimes quite tense), expectations from game, views on NQ, but still we are (or were) quite special community united in dreams. Missing people from such colourful band, that formed over years, feels as unrecoverable losses.

Worst part, that even this forum/discord arguments about situation feel so meaningless...
 
Same people just repeating all same story how everything is not right and what NQ should do in ideal world (me included). Other same people repeating (to counter first part indeed) all over again same story of "this is beta", "give devs some time", "all is fine, I'm enjoying the game". Somewhere in middle personal fights ignite (because nothing new to add anyway). At this point I generaly even know names, that will be involved and roughly what they will say and how interact with each other.
 
I feel like we all prisoners of some cursed dark forest of something, just making endless rounds trying to find exit and fighting each other because of evil enchantment.
 
 
 
 

Well, I'm just not logging in anymore.
 
Still going to be around the forum and Discord in the hope I'm an idiot for being wrong, which I do not expect to be the case though.

Wait, people pay money monthly for an mmorpg and get no technical support on weekends? What kind of service is that?

"To provide better support we will now treat everyone equally and make you wait 1 months for issues that could be solved within minutes if you pm a dev in discord or ingame"
Really? Sorry that i post here, but really? For better support? Does NQ think we are retarded? At least don't come up with such an obvious lie as excuse when you don't want to provide the manpower for real time support...

The problem is this, they are touting this bare bones mission and wallet system as something that should be featured for their patch.  These 2 things should be a footnote at best included in the patch, not really warrant there own dev blog.  Maybe the mission should, IF and ONLY if it came near feature complete, which it isn't.  Give us the fucking dev blog on asteroids, and anything else that is actually content, and reasons to you know, fly out in space.   Yes planets are cool, but where are all the stuff to do in space? where is the content? Where are the deep range scanners to find not only other ships, but maybe anomalies, or event wrecks deep in space.  Anything to give us a fun reason to fly around and explore in this big space they gave us.

PROBLEM is, that we still not know all what will be included in 0.24.
 
As russian proverb goes -- "spoon of tar in barrel of honey" -- still totaly possible. So I'm kinda on overwatch about all this, ready for suprises.

Personally, I don't see the point in schematics if NQ is planning on implementing power.
 
Power seems like a much more intuitive and realistic way to gate industry -- and one that would be easier for new players to understand and afford. As a design concept, schematics don't feel like they really fit -- it's a clumsy solution to the core problem. 
 
The point of alpha/beta isn't to have a balanced game. That would be an absurd goal that requires an extremely detailed plan -- game design discipline that most studios couldn't achieve, never mind NQ.
 
I don't think 0.23 was "horrible" -- but I do think it was a major waste of time that could have been better spent on feature development.
 
Schematics were a balance change, and balance changes don't really add anything to the game, they shuffle around the parts that already exist.
 
Why spend time balancing a game that isn't done? You'll need to revisit as more features roll out, regardless...I get that they promised "no wipes" -- that doesn't somehow make it more plausible to balance an alpha/beta as you go. 
 
NQ is really slow at dev -- it might be a different story if they were faster, but they aren't. They should have invested the time it took to develop 0.23 into finishing features rather than trying to balance the very incomplete features they already have.
 
That's why I actually agree with them ignoring the schematic price exploit -- they're slow enough as it is without distractions, their only goal should be finishing the game's core features so that the discussion of balance actually makes sense. 

Of course NQ is the one making all the decisions when it comes to game features. But that doesn't mean we the players have to like them, especially when they are obvious efforts to time gate the play time in a subscription game that is severely lacking features.
 
And just like NQ get to decide when and how to implement features, we get to decide if we want to play a game with such features. And if enough people decide they don't want to play that game, whatever NQ decides will no longer be relevant.

Calling all Noveans! 
 
We’re nearing the final stages of preparing the Dual Universe public test server (PTS) for its upcoming grand opening, and we need your help. 

If you are an active DU subscriber, please join us for a PTS load test. During this test, we will be gathering data related to server capacity and performance and trying out the new launcher. What’s more, you’ll be getting your first taste of the 0.24 build that’s currently in development. Your character and assets from the Live server will be mirrored on PTS. 
 
Your account login information will be the same for both the Live server and PTS; however, access to PTS requires downloading, installing and running a separate client, as well as the testing of the new launcher we’re rolling out with 0.24. 
 
Get the PTS client here. 
 
Feedback and bug reports related to PTS should be posted in this designated forum. 
 
Note that we anticipate that the performance won’t be smooth. They never are with these sorts of tests - and that’s a big part of what makes them important. 
 
It’s important to mention that PTS is solely for testing purposes. We’d like to manage expectations that PTS updates may include feature prototypes and gameplay changes that might not ever come to the Live server.
 
We understand that some players prefer a more stable and polished gameplay experience. Test servers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Updates will be unpolished. There will be no Customer Support. The server may be offline for extended periods, wiped or taken offline without advance notice. 
 
That being said, those who choose to brave the raw environment of the PTS will find there are certain advantages. Participation on PTS will give you the chance to help shape DU by sharing your insights and constructive criticism earlier in the development process. You’ll also get sneak peeks at content before it’s deployed on the Live server and impacts the persistent universe of DU. This will afford you the chance to formulate strategies for how to get the most out of upcoming changes. In addition, there may be times when we ease the experience by providing necessary equipment and resources on a discretionary basis. For example, if we need to test a new weapon, we may provide it for free to save PTS players the time and effort of creating it for themselves.                   
                                                                    
The Novaquark team hopes that many players will choose to help us test features on the PTS in the future, as it is one of the steps we are taking to further improve the quality of our releases, make sure our features are relevant, and overall have a development approach that further involves our community of players.
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team
 

Dear Noveans,
 
With the opening of the Public Test Server (PTS) available to all DU players come a few guidelines, if you want to give some feedback.
We wanted - for a long time - to give the opportunity to anyone among you to give your opinion on features before they hit the Live Server.
However, as the time window to give feedback on new features deployed on the PTS will be usually limited, it's important to get structured feedback to be taken into account by the Devs, in order to make possible changes before deploying the said features on the Live Server. Note: having a new or modified feature deployed on the PTS doesn't necessarily mean that the same will be deployed on the Live Server. Community feedback may change the Dev Team course of action.
 
In order to facilitate the follow-up of your feedback by the Dev Team, it's really important to talk about one topic/feature per forum thread.
Additionally it's highly advised to follow the template below when giving feedback on a specific topic/feature deployed on the PTS:
 
Naming clearly the feature / game mechanics involved. Your feedback on the deployed feature (what you like / what you don't like about it (in this case, please give an explanation why you don't like it)). What kind of improvement you would see for such feature.  
If your feedback is about a bug report, please follow this template:
 
Subject: [BUG] <Issue name here> Current Version Number: <Can be seen when closing the client> Impact: <Game breaking / Crash / Corruption / Item/Data loss / Inconvenience / Cosmetic> Summary: <Short outline of the issue> Description: <Description of the issue> Reproduction: <Steps taken to make this bug happen>  
Reminder: there will be no official support for the PTS.
This means you can report bugs you found/experienced on the PTS (preferably in this forum section).
It's encouraged to report bugs found on the PTS, to make sure they won't be replicated once the involved feature will be deployed on the Live Server.
However, do not send tickets to the Customer Support to fix issues you encountered on the PTS.
Why no support? The reason is quite simple: in their experimental state, things may be broken.
The Novaquark Team prefer to allocate 100% of the Customer Support resources to the Live Server, where the "real game" happens.
 
We hope you'll understand our stance on the matter.
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Sure.. That's what an Enterprise license is for

As you 5 min ago posted in nearby topic: "Stop whining. Git gud".

Double standards, mate, so double.