le_souriceau

I would like to thank NQ for being reverse-toxic enough to finally break through my DU addiction and make me quit! I can't thank you enough, another game/publisher will also really appreciate the €500/year that will go to them instead of NQ...
 
I've been unhappy with DU (and specifically NQ) for a while now. The 180 degree turnarounds on things they announce/say in an official capacity, the wipe... My gawd the wipe! The wipe announcement! The 5+ months of 0 motivation due to the wipe announcement... The talent points after wipe. The 2.5 years of downgrading DU instead of introducing new interesting stuff... But even with the lack of actual enjoyment and the constant feeling that all I've build in DU will be taken away again, I was still here, probably because I was addicted enough to DU to keep coming back. I've done the asteroid mining thing again and that was kinda disappointing with the 5000L-6000L nodes, but maybe if I gitgut the experience might be more enjoyable (like in the old days)... Every time I need to extend my subscription I think more and more about the option of quitting, but I can't do that because reasons... (addict reasoning)
 
But this morning I got a ticket from NQ support... But I didn't submit a ticket and the email I initially got wasn't clear about it either (system not designed for reverse tickets). So I log in and I see the claim that my Airdock at Alioth Market 6 is above the 1000m limit. And I get a REALLY negative feeling, not specifically because I need to move my airdock to a lower altitude, the person at NQ that submitted the ticket to me could probably do that for me (and they can, I just need to move the dynamic cores)... But because of, why the heck could I deploy that there in the first place? That 1000m height limit didn't feel correct, I thought it was 1000m above ground level (but that was wrong as well). Why didn't that 'feel' correct? Because we get blasted with a TON of conflicting information all over the place and I loose track of what the 'current' rules are... So I went digging, this is what I found:
 
 
The 1000m height limit was posted during an Ask Aphelia sessions (by NQ-Deckard) and it was 1000m above sea level (5th of August):
 
Then we have NQ-Deckard's announcement (23rd of November):
"We will allow these constructs to remain for two weeks beyond the implementation of the new height restriction system."
 
Patch notes (24th of November) state:
https://www.dualuniverse.game/launcher/patch/release-1014
"Alioth: 1300m"
 
The 'new height restriction system' hasn't been implemented yet, so structures placed should be OK (according to NQ-Deckard) two weeks after the 'new height restriction system' has been implemented, which again, it isn't.
 
Even IF that did happen in the last two weeks, that was never mentioned in the patch notes, heck the whole issue was not mentioned in patch notes known issues section. The patch notes actually say that the limit is 1300m (which I'm still above) and not a 1000m as the support person mentions and wasn't changed in later patch notes, it's also the most recent height limit that NQ mentions and I could find.
 
The issue for me is not the having to move the dynamic constructs so the support person can move it to the proper height. But that this isn't the issue, it's the issue that I have to dig through all kinds of NQ publiced information and even the lastest info there (1300m) doesn't conform with what the support person is saying (1000m). That says a couple of things to me: It's a mess internally at NQ as they can't even coordinate among themselves the proper values that things should be and they can't communicate with us correctly either (known issues), as I was under the assumption this issue was fixed a while back. So that was pretty much the straw that was breaking the camels back for me. But maybe I'll calm down before tonight, the deadline to extend the subscriptions for two of my accounts....
 
Then I get the support ticket back... Which it short, doesn't address my issues and pretty much states "Thank you for you detailed response, it's appreciated. Now you have 24 hours to move those dynamic constructs away or we have to delete (the static constructs?) as they violate the rules. Thank you."... Yeah, I'm out, no waiting for this evening.
 
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I feel this. DU made me mostly quit gaming in general and buy a small ranch IRL. Honestly thank you NQ. I was hooked on this until you destroyed it. 

It's beyond stupid to ask players to read and obey rules that can easily be integrated into the game itself...but this is something that's been said many, many times.
 
Game rules are meant to be integrated into the game, and if NQ doesn't want to do that basic thing, at least they can have a lighter hand in enforcement. 
 
Hope you have fun in whatever game you find, @Cergorach! I'm sure there's plenty of other studios that would work much harder for your sub money. 

There is still possibility of NQ somewhow (in wierd frankenstein way) integrading DU into their new "3d blog metaverse" thing.
 
But not sure if many people will like such continuation of game pseudolife.
 
 

Its hard to tell without serious inside, but I think decision to only maintain DU just as useful "showcase" (for future project/s) was done much well before. My guess with failed Beta start, that on itself was rather "last ditch effort", everyone involved from inside knew its not gonna make it -- and JC removal half year later just formalized the reality on the ground. And they jumped for some plan B, leaving several devs to cover their "retreat" and maintain development simulacrum for players.
 
I have some modest experience in web projects (including failed ones) and can vividly imagine this crisis meetings and cynical ideas going on. Maybe its something I be doing myself in this situation. Lying to players/clients. Its how buisness work (no ideally, but realisticly happens with failing ones).

Trick is DU isn't new by any stretch of imagination, whole dynamics with players base burn are like 7 years in making. So game closer to be old actually.
 
Other then this -- agree, its NQ chance to show something reasonably done for a change. PvE is years overdue, but I guess they only surrendered to it against "player driven" when there is no players left to drive anything.

I think it felt such way for many people, even if they were unable to formulate, because from quite early point it go as that NQ obviously not producing expected "full strenght" effort of reasonably motivated team of stated size.
 
All our endless discussions of we need this, game need that, how to improve this feature... always kinda crushed by reality into dust over "suspicion" that its like probably 10 actual dev people in agony trying to do at least something (and its done badly and taking forever). So you just cease to expect anything good, because, well, its mathematicly impossible at the end of the day.
 
 

TBH, looking back on it I can't even be certain why I felt the way I felt, but I just assumed that a wipe WOULD, (not might) be incoming and stopped playing accordingly.
 
Hell, even now, I feel that the game WILL fail and be shut down (not might) and so I am equally demotivated to play as I was this time last year.
 
There is absolutely no way in Hell (or any other made up plane of existence) that this game can survive without a bottomless pocketed sponsor. The game is toast... Or more accurately, it's like one of those icebergs that has drifted too far south... penguins on the surface are still able to huddle together and go about doing their daily penguiny things, but the ice is shrinking and eventually, it will all come to nought and they will all be plunged into the middle of the ocean and drown.
 
And that's my "charitable" outlook of NQ's approach to community development.

Two types of players left in the game by now.
 
- Veterans who live on the promise of the game that was sold them (aka potential), and somehow still manage to believe/hope that NQ will turn things around.
- New players that are feeling the rush of discovering what works in the game like building and flying, and have yet to discover how shallow the game actually is.

And with active new players being in the hundreds according to steam statistics, and looking at how NQ is handling the game then I think it is safe to say that yes.. The game is dying. I would even argue that the game is already dead, and only being kept alive with artificial life support.

Seems like a match to me, with the speed and type of game patches and improvements we are seeing after release. And as the saying goes. If the shoe fits..

It can easily not be beneficial.
 
For example, if sub money is being spent on other projects because they know DU isn't going to work out, that's clearly not beneficial to DU. 
 
I'm unclear why you would think that NQ would develop a "more commercial" product just to support a product that's bleeding revenue...their goal is to make money, not to do commercial side projects just to burn money on a product that has not worked. 
 
 
It's up to the developer to tell us that the game is alive by communicating about the future.
 
On one hand we have a small dev using resources on other projects, on the other we have an MMO with zero traction that's only bleeding players. What else are we supposed to think? 
 
I'm not saying the "game is dead", NQ is. That's what this announcements means to me, anyway. 
 
Regardless, I disagree with this idea that talking frankly about the state of the game is "not helpful" because it's negative. 

It's certainly helpful to new players that think this is a good game to invest their time and money into.
 
Even the devs would rather invest their time and money elsewhere, apparently. If that isn't a sign, I don't know what is. 

🤷‍♂️
 
Clearly it was never a lot. 😅
 
I think the point is that even NQ isn't focused on DU's future.
 
So the answer to "what's next?" is very simply: "a project other than DU". The CEO is spelling this out clearly (IMO), even if they don't want to announce it here. 
 
To those that enjoy the game by all means keep playing, but don't pretend sub money is going to improve DU or that the game will have major changes. 
 
New players especially should understand that as of right now there's no evidence to suggest NQ is going to keep developing DU in any meaningful way, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.
 
Of course I could be wrong, but it's on NQ to clarify the statements by their own CEO and the lack of any updates or information in general since the last patch. 
 
I get that people have been doom and gloom for a long time and talking about how DU is "dead"...but at this point the writing is very literally on the wall. They are moving on to new projects and naysayers should get over it since it's "just a game". 
 
NQ seems to be all but done with DU, but they will milk remaining players for every penny they are worth and use player creations to promote other projects as "proof" of their great tech.
 
I wouldn't care enough to rant this long if they were at least somewhat honest with their players, but it's very likely that NQ ditched major dev on DU months ago to work on other projects. That's the final cherry on top of the "NQ treats its customers oh so well" sundae.

If I’ve learned anything over the last 7 or so years, it’s that NQ prefers to do things without lube. I’m afraid it could never be.

In short, the illusion that someone from NQ read it was not working, thus the section is closed.
 
 

Happens when you think you are "god" in your own world, cannot accept critici to talk and think its your right to change stuff on the go, forget about promisses and have a double moral on how to treath players and for who an offence is bannable and for who not. Throw in a few wipes like its SE and just make the grind even harder as a korean mmo, next call it an mmo without limits but add so many the people are feeling "work"  and add pvp, but dont add the stuff that Is PvP.
promiss 6 pillars but only deliver 1 or 2  and reduce the others to minigames.
cancell or reduce features due to server stress, but name it upgrades and dont deliver what is promissed.
Add an HQ while you already have one, kickout the people that actually listen to the players and only think Profit while making none.
 
And that results to about 80 actives per time period,

Agreed 100%. 
 
another “1st alpha” backer here where most of our time initially consisted of waiting for the servers to open up. 
 
I remember at one of the first Alpha resets where inventory was introduced, spawning on the arcship, literally hundreds and hundreds of nondescript (no colors yet) players constantly pouring out and flowing across the bridges like somewhat low frame rate water. 

there was a sense of eagerness and we honestly felt like pioneers on a search for a grand vista to place down our first cores. I remember bumping into a then promenent backer called Yamamushi and we chatted about how groundbreaking the game was and how it was basically a cross between Eve and Minecraft and how huge it was going to be… and with the sun shining down from bright blue sky and the snowy mountain peaks glistening in the distance, and seemingly endless players flowing past us over the bridge and away from the Arcship in every direction, we could believe it, too.  

Cut to the final release, and the fifth reset for me and the feeling of pioneer is just a distant long forgotten memory, like a dream of a dream…
 
every release has been a diluted, lesser version of the one before to the point where this time, the “release” came and I couldn’t even be bothered to place my STU. 
 
For many, STUs themselves arrived far too late to make them relevant either ingame itself or as a valid player number counter. 

the old guard are generally tired, disaffected or outright bored. 
 
NovaX was on MP2 on Alioth for the first Alpha release, then for the Balpha (alpha masquerading as a beta) we were part of the MP3 development on Madis, along with MTI which was, AFAIK, the biggest Madis development that spread 15km end to end and consisted of perhaps 500 L cores by the time the suspicion of an incoming wipe knocked the wind from our collective sails. 
 
Madis was never a busy place, even MP3 but you’d always see a yellow marker or two at any time of day or night. People visiting via surrogate pods or dropping in at the market to buy something. 
 
numerically, there were I think six first wave backers in NovaX.  Of those two of us remain, but by the Beta we had grown to pushing 60 players (not alts) of which 20 or 30 might have been on at any one time. 
 
now there are four of us and I am usually on by myself, much like the last half of the Beta. 
 
damn, I’m getting the feels now…
 

The game did not die because of players. The game died because NQ sucked the life out of the game alienating players at every step, to the point that not even the hard core fans would stay around any longer.

If you want any catharsis, just write a letter and mail it to: Sanat Claus, Northpole... You might have a better chance of something happening with your idea that way...

Its absolutly nothing new here. NQ "shanking" hard different playstyle players from 2016 pretty much. Its just people sometimes tend to be dismissive over issues initially, that feel like not theirs or overblown etc. Then its proverbial knock on their door. Because with style of how NQ tries to develop this game no one is "safe".
 
 
Only demographic mystery how Steam accs correspond to non-Steam accs (where more of "old guard" players concentrated). Proportion.
 
On Steam layer game pretty much dead with miserable 100-150 concurrent accounts most of the time. Out of Steam I guess its bit better, but still nothing to write home about. Maybe additional 250-300 concurrent accounts (not players).

Well, at the start of the game Steam peaked at nearly 800 *concurrent* players.  FOr the 'old guard'?  Well Sanctuary moon has under 1700 plots claimed and many of the old guard have more than one account.  So there aren't that many 'old guard' players either.  My theory is most of the subbed player base right now is just mission running alts.
 

But in order to get that they had to put the price up by 30% to give steam their cut.  And that price push definitely did reduce the number of players in the game.  So the whole steam/wipe thing looks very much like a net negative to me.  At the very least a missed oportunity.

I think that ship has sailed, while some might come back, most won't ever touch DU again. Too much 'bad blood' by changes and promises unkept. The wipe was a breaking point for many. The way NQ handles characters and possessions for folks with long lapsed accounts is also so horrible that it doesn't reward coming back at a later time and start from scratch (AGAIN!)...

Its long talk about DU demographics, but in short -- its not much left to retain. And this on itself will not switch viability in green.
 
DU started like rather niche thing -- with limited number of people in world who can be interested in such product, but because of years of failures, gradually burned over most of potenial player base, who was alienated over all kinda of dissapointments. So, issue is how to return thousands of "sandbox space mmo" loving people who tried DU, but had enough and now have negative (sometimes very negative) opinion over it. 
 
I can't formulate it well in english, but in marketing terms its like limited volume market, where you can't "create/convert" consumers in any meaningful number out of raw population, its harsh competition for rather static number of existing ones.
 
I think this is main thing in DU demographic doom, that people kinda trying to ignore all the time, imagining how some features or right action suddenly reverse so much catastrophic loss.
 

We don't have TW because anything but some turned based mini game for TW would be to costly to host, and implementing TW as a mini game would just further highlight how flawed their technology is.
 
Same with air combat and AvA, not possible with the technology in this game..

Its long talk about DU demographics, but in short -- its not much left to retain. And this on itself will not switch viability in green.
 
DU started like rather niche thing -- with limited number of people in world who can be interested in such product, but because of years of failures, gradually burned over most of potenial player base, who was alienated over all kinda of dissapointments. So, issue is how to return thousands of "sandbox space mmo" loving people who tried DU, but had enough and now have negative (sometimes very negative) opinion over it. 
 
I can't formulate it well in english, but in marketing terms its like limited volume market, where you can't "create/convert" consumers in any meaningful number out of raw population, its harsh competition for rather static number of existing ones.
 
I think this is main thing in DU demographic doom, that people kinda trying to ignore all the time, imagining how some features or right action suddenly reverse so much catastrophic loss.
 

I remember initially they bragged about that some mega_french_sci-fi author involved name of whom i'm always forgetting. But it seems NQ had only enough money to make him interested for couple of short texts, that become irrelevant somewhere in first years of endless changes.