Yamamoto

Full Wipe but keep the BPs

Full wipe please.

This constant 'play to keep' pressure is fundamentally wrong for a subscription game.
 
DU is the type of game where players will play for long periods, but then want to take a brake for something else. But not being able to do so and continue where they left of (in a building focused game with subscription no less), only makes them quit instead.
 
I would compare the DU subscription to cloud storage. Meaning as long as you keep paying the subscription you are also paying for NQ to maintain your current state in the game while you are away.
 
And if this does not scale economically, then NQ should stop beating around the bush and put a hard cap on what and single account can actually do in the game. But this would be admitting that the entire premise for the game is broken, so...

This is the follow-up to Tuesday’s devblog, Inside Ares, Part One. Here we’ll go over the improvements and changes to warp sequences as well as docking and boarding. Even if you read the previous devblog about docking and boarding, you should give this a look; we’ve been finessing the original plans to make them even better. 
 
WARP IMPROVEMENTS
Based on player feedback, we’re turning the knobs down a bit on warp drive. The ability to cancel a warp at any time made it more powerful and flexible than originally intended. To curb that, warp speed has been divided by 4. Although it may seem like we’re overcorrecting, in effect it’s not as drastic as it sounds. Travel will take a little longer at the new rate; expect trips to be closer to the minute mark rather than 15 seconds. This will take it from “blindingly fast” to “still pretty damn fast”. 

The cooldown has been adjusted to 150 seconds (2.5 minutes). This will require more judicious use of warping as you weigh the convenience of using it against having it available in case of needing to bug out quickly if you unexpectedly encounter threats. 

Probably the most impactful change is that auto-align strength during the warp sequence has been reduced to 20%. This change will correct a situation where the warp alignment was way too powerful for larger ships. Keep in mind you can still align manually before warping and skip this step. We hope this will keep pilots more engaged and thinking about the warping process either by passive aligning to an extract point or actively aligning before warping.

We’re also adding spool-up time. Spooling is a post-align state in which your warp drive is spooling after aligning. This is intended to curb the purely reactionary defensive use of warp drives. Going into a PvP zone is a risk, and the risk vs. reward needs to reflect the weight of those situations. If you’re paying attention, hitting warp could get you out of most dangerous situations in a flash and we felt that this was a little too strong. Initially, the spool-up time will be set to 15 seconds.

Last but not least, weapon fire taken during the initialization sequence - be it starting the warp, alignment, or spooling sequences - will cancel the action. (Note: Hits taken once the ship enters warp after the spooling process will not cancel the warp and the ship will continue to warp.) This is a behavior players have requested and we've also intended to implement for a while. Although we don’t want to shift the risk-vs-reward ratio too far the other way, we believe this is a good change.

DOCKING AND BOARDING REVAMP
Since we published the Docking and Boarding Revamp devblog, we have continued to iterate on the design to make it even better. Before explaining the incoming changes, here’s a quick recap of what we previously announced.
 
The owner of a construct or ship is considered the “parent”. As a parent, you will now have more control of, and more information about, your current docking and boarding situation. On the information side, you will always see your current avatar/ship boarding/docking status. You are free to (un)dock/(un)board while in the immediate proximity of any construct to which you have RDMS rights. To get ''in'’ the construct, you will need to be docked/boarded to that construct or you will be repulsed.
 
A new widget will display your construct parenting information. This will also be available in the control unit data in Lua. We’re also adding a build helper window that lists parented masses (player or construct) to the inspected construct. This will allow you to evict any unwelcome guests. 
 
Thanks to your feedback, we’ve revisited our plans and made some additional adjustments based on your input. The introduction of two alternative docking modes to complement the existing default “manual” mode. 
To change your docking mode preference, you will need to reset it in the context menu action on the targeted new parent construct or by using the new shortcut to switch active docking to the closest docking candidate. 
 
The "Automatic'’ mode will automatically dock you to the closest ship for which you have docking rights. ''Automatic (owner)'' will do the same if the ship is owned by the same entity as the pilot.   
The docking widget is changing to display these changes.  

 
New Lua functions will give you more flexibility to create docking rules for your constructs. 
 
Players also told us that having to use a context menu while maneuvering the construct felt awkward. To address this, we’re making changes to the reticle that will give more fluidity by allowing you to see the best docking candidate of the maneuvered constructs, using the same shortcut (Alt-T) so that you can switch docking of the maneuvered construct without using a context menu.
 
COMING SOON
Production to transition Ares from PTS to Live is well underway. It bears repeating that players, especially those who enjoy PvP, should spend a little time on the test server to see the impact these changes will have on their personal gameplay. 
 
We’d love to hear your feedback about Ares. Join the conversation in this thread. 
 

We recently announced that an additional update, Ares, was added to our public roadmap. Many of the features and changes for Ares will be available on our public test server (PTS), when it is updated and back online tomorrow, September 15th, at 10.00 UTC. (See the roadmap here.)
 
In that announcement, we promised a devblog that would talk about the big-ticket items we plan to deliver with Ares: the new Core Combat Stress victory condition, more functionality for shields, and PVP-related fixes. (Inside Ares, Part Two will cover warp improvements as well as boarding and docking changes. Watch for it on Thursday.) 
 
Without further ado, let’s dive in! 

CORE COMBAT STRESS 
In a nutshell, core combat stress represents a core's ability to keep functioning under prolonged weapons fire. A core unit that takes too much stress will be destroyed and will be considered a PvP destruction.
 
Core combat stress will be used as a second loss condition on constructs during PvP, working in tandem with generic core unit destruction. It does not matter which one happens first, only that one happens eventually. This will allow us to support larger fights and ensure that everyone's weapons are doing damage, even if it is only against core stress.
 
Stress will be accumulated as the construct takes non-shield weapons hits, taking the form of a gauge that starts at 0% and goes up to 100%. Non-shield hits on a construct will make the gauge go up. The core stress gauge is affected by a weapon's raw damage and is unaffected by the resistances of the element or material the attack hit.
 
Example: A weapon hit does 1,000 thermic damage. It hits an element with 50% thermic resistance doing 500 damage to the element; however, the core stress gauge will count 1,000 damage for that hit.
 
When the core stress gauge hits 100%, the core unit will be destroyed and will be considered a PvP destruction (as if it was destroyed by a weapons hit) and everything that implies.
 
The value of the stress gauge will be defined by the following:
The base of the core stress gauge value will be the health sum of honeycomb materials on your construct. The quality of the material used will provide multipliers to the value. Higher honeycomb tiers will provide better multipliers. The type of material used will provide a different multiplier, with products having a better multiplier than pure materials.   
Finally, the stress gauge will gain health linearly with honeycomb until a cap, at which point additional honeycomb will have diminishing returns.

SHIELDS v2
The fundamentals for shields were unveiled in this devblog and made their initial debut with the Apollo update in August. The time has come to increase their potency and value with some new features. 
 
Shields v2 brings adjustable resistances and venting. 
 
Adjustable resistances Shields have a base resistance value of 10/10/10/10 with an additional resistance pool of 60% that players can assign in 5% increments to any of the four resistances. (Examples: 10/10/10/70 or 25/25/25/25) Once players have locked in their resistance selections, those choices will be active and cannot be changed until the cooldown time of 60 seconds has expired, at which time the resistances will remain as set unless they are recalibrated. Shields UI will display which resistances are taking the most damage on the shield, allowing pilots to make an informed decision regarding the settings. Venting Pilots may vent their shields at any point, the exception being when the venting cooldown is active. Cooldown duration varies per size, with smaller shield variants having lower cooldowns. Venting shields will do two things: Turn off the shields, bearing in mind that they can’t be active during venting.  Begin shield regeneration of a certain percentage per second.  Venting may be deactivated at any time. Deactivation will occur automatically when shields have reached maximum capacity.   
We highly encourage pilots to explore the use of shields and venting while it’s available on PTS. Since there’s a bit of a learning curve involved, the test environment is the perfect place to experiment freely without any real cost to your ship on the Live server. 
 
PVP FIXES
We’re closing the loop on some “unintended” uses of these game mechanics. 
Speed Resume deactivated on construct death: When a core is destroyed, that construct will be incapable of benefitting from speed resume in any way. This will avoid and fix various exploits in regards to “ghost-riding” destroyed ships into safe zones. Offline player deaths on construct death: Offline players on constructs will now be killed on core destruction. This will avoid logging off characters that can then log back in, repair the core unit, and attempt to flee.   
Originally, the plans also included a change that would cause ownership loss on core unit crash destruction. Thanks to our intrepid PTS players who tried it out and promptly let us know the problems such a change could cause, we pulled it from the Ares update. (Read the related post from the Game Design team’s NQ-Entropy.) 
 
This is exactly why we have a test server and why we value those who do reconnaissance there before the updates are released on the Live server. We offer sincere thanks to the players who took the time to give us candid, constructive feedback. 
 
SEE YA THURSDAY
Inside Ares, Part Two will be published on Thursday. While you’re waiting, why not head over to the forum and share your thoughts about Part One? 
 

Or tie yourself to the "hate" players lob at you for being the head of a company? People crucified JC for the games issues in forums, discord, twitter, etc- the man probably just wants to be able to do his job in peace.  IDK, 0.25 was a solid release, bit lacking in some ways but since playing was the smoothest roll out, 0.26 felt reactionary to starbase release, and while a solid update... myself and others couldn't really play the game for weeks due to the CTD issues. Gotta say, I almost took a break from the game due to it... 

What made me take a break earlier this year was not the state of the game, but the state of NQ.... communication had ceased- updates and feature progress slowed, and the knowledge the company was effectively out of funds and JC was MIA/stepped downed as CEO. As a player I had felt abandoned on a sinking ship.

Now though... NQ is communicating with players, maybe not taking all their feedback into consideration... but least trying it seams. Company has funding, least enough I'd hope for another year, least the CEO is in bed with the investment firm that is helping fund the game, so if the game can be turned around / saved by the new player experince on the road-map... and as long as numbers start looking up on their player churn rate I'd hope/think they'll provide enough funds to continue till it's out of beta.

But right now, their biggest battle will be the player churn rate. it's the simple factor that all MMO's live and die by.  I really hope this game can continue to live, and that they can return to a positive churn rate and grow the game. Auto-miners and the new user experince, along with smashing bugs/exploits may be the determining factor for many.

This person really got pissed when I provided data from sources in the game. White Knights have nothing to do with it.   They are so mad that they got shut down in other posts they bring me with them everywhere they go.   I'm glad I'm in your thoughts joaocorderio still, obvious I hit a nerve with you by simply providing data.  Also the source of the data and the code for the data was all made available publicly so you could run your own script bird to find and locate players yourself.   

But as a White Knight your ignorance of the game continues to shine.  "the servers are packing with players" If your going to call me into your fights, at least use correct factual information.  Run your own data tracking tools (publicly available on git hub), stop shitting on DU when you already confirmed you haven't even logged in since 0.23.  

But hey, big streamers like Gottchar quit right so the game must be dead.  (he returned)
Other streamers like AmigoMike quit too because pvp was extremely frustrating. (oh wait, also returned)
Landmark explorer took a vacation, does that count? (also back)

The argument "everyone was at markets in September" doesn't really account for people who are self-sufficient and don't go to markets.  

Watch General Chat in game- new players daily
Watch Help Chat in game- NQ responds to new players questions constantly.

Facts - NQ has focused development to increase content in the game (true)
         - NQ did a pvp balance pass on talents to fix issues with damage reduction at high talents (true)
         - NQ added new voxel tools and improved voxel tool results (true)
         - NQ added GFN service and optimization which has brought a new batch of players to the game (true)

Fake News- NQ is an abandoned game now that JC isn't in charge anymore.
                 - Ground mining is going to be removed when asteroids release
                 - NQ doesn't listen to the community.  (see org change delays)

Are number of players the same as September?  Its impossible for anyone to know. Since NQ has never released this data and all inquiries to NQ staff to this end results in them stating; "This information is not for players to know". 

Are the players who played in September the same as the ones playing now? - Definitely not, most players quit DU due to its janky controls, steep learning curve and lack of direction for new players prior to 0.23.  The remaining ones left when 0.23 dropped because they were upset that something changed they didn't agree with.  NQ certainly is aware of this.  Only a handful of players pushed through 0.23 and are now fully in control of market prices.  (Gottchar, Moriar, others)  (also sure those that did weren't happy about it either)

Is DU a good game to watch on twitch?  - No. Watching mining is boring.  Many of the systems take so much time that it is not entertaining to watch. However there are new people and old people streaming daily still, and the twitch community is by far the funniest group of viewers/players you will find supporting those who do.

Conclusion:   NQ and DU have come a long way in the past 8 months since the release of 0.23, that said there is still a long way to go.  Many of the systems encourage players to take breaks from the game, and afk activities are more predominate now than they were at Beta launch.  Missions allow you to spend 10 mins aiming, 6 hours afk flying, then 10mins landing.   With auto-mining coming down the roadmap, massive pvp changes (visible on the PTS) and asteroid mining fixing what many say constantly "Ore is running out" nearly daily on the DU-Discord.  Has NQ made mistakes, yes they accepted joaocordeiro's application during Alpha, as well as other mistakes. 

____________

TLDR-  I haven't quit DU but I do play "less" than I did 8 months ago, but that might be due to the fact I now "have" stuff in abundance and can be more selective on the projects I start, and the commissions builds I do.  But my friends keep me in the game playing and building and having a good time, pirates keep me busy with Salvage from the 10-20 ships they kill per day.  I do play other games daily as well, but there are many good games out there worth your $7.00 per month, or even $50 one time purchase.  Its okay to take a week off, two weeks off, a month off, because if you set yourself up correctly you will have more talents, better stats, and have made some quanta hopefully by the time you return.  At the end of the day, your entertainment budget and free time are up to the individual player to decide what is worth their time or not.  Every single ALPHA tagged player has their "own" interpretation of what DU should be today.  However trashing the developer, then saying "why didn't it get better" is in no way helpful to anyone.   Calling people white knights because they provide raw factual data as a response that counters your "I hate NQ propoganda" isn't getting you anywhere.   

Quote- "Yes I'm playing New World, and will probably play it alot, however I'm still going to be playing DU, because no other game scratches the building itch quite like DU." - D4nkKnight

Oh and joaocordeiro, I'm a happily married individual, I'd appreciate it if you found someone else to think about daily. 

23: Use cool ship physics to build a huge hover race track for players to have fun on
24: make friends and trade to get whatever you need in the new industry economy
25: make gliding simulator game with points system that can be played with friends
26: finish beautiful structure....no....it's never quite finished
27: have a brief session mining out a mega node to finance the next 2 weeks of game play...a bit boring but you got to earn somehow
28: open main race stadium to public on VR machines
29: visit friend's mercenary bar on the north pole to see how it is coming along
30: make a deal to have 200,000L of crater soil from Madis delivered to your race track on Alioth to make the 'Madis Hairpin'
31: visit friends parking platform near the market to see how they are getting along
32: spend two hours trying to help a random new guy move his whole base form Sanctuary to Alioth.
33: Come to forums. Shake head. Leave forums.
 
?

Sorry your highness for only doing this in my free time to your benefit to the best of my abilities and not better. But yes, I will change it.

I see people report it isnt working, when I still had the talent it didnt add 20% like my 4 points should have given but I was of course unable to measure precisely. According to the DU twitter it was nerfed, not disabled. So it took the info in that twitter conversation which was a reduction to 1% per level.

Despite our recent efforts to expand and clear out Market 6, we are still getting reports about performance and clutter. We want to assure our players that we understand your frustration and are still working to find better permanent solutions. 
 
Meanwhile, we will be addressing clutter across Alioth this weekend. Our plan is as follows:
Dynamic constructs that have not had direct interaction with their owner over a set duration (currently 30 days*) will be hidden.  Constructs at the market that violate our rules,  Code of Conduct and EULA will be removed.
If your construct is hidden, you can unhide (recover) it by using the Fetch tool. To do this, right-click on it in the Construct list on your Map screen. Any constructs that you own, whether visible or hidden, will appear on this list.
 
Fetch functionality now works for organization-owned constructs as well. For hidden constructs that belong to your organization, your legates can retrieve them via that same functionality. 
 
Our customer support team is at the ready if you still need assistance recovering your constructs. Simply ping our Live Support staff in the in-game help chat with “@GM” or file a ticket on our support page and we will dispatch help right away!
 
Please note that this is intended only as a temporary measure to aid performance and improve your experience when visiting these areas. 
 
We look forward to seeing the results from these changes over the weekend.
 
May your frames be plenty.
 
 
*Duration may change based on our findings 

THE FUTURE OF DU
We’ve seen a lot of positive feedback following the release of our devblog series on the future of DU. We’re  thankful to our community for the great feedback and encouragement. We’ve collected what seem to be the most burning questions following the publication of the blogs and wanted to do a follow-up to address them the best we can. Not all questions have an answer at this point, and we’ll try to fill in the gaps as we’re able in future communications. 
 
Are you going to launch the game in 2021? 
Realistically speaking, we have too much to do with the time that’s left  this year to get to a state where we feel the game is ready for launch. Our current plan is “at some point in 2022”, and we’re targeting mid-year. That projection is tentative, depending largely on our progress and  the feedback we get from our community, so please don’t hold this as a commitment. It could be sooner, it could be a bit later. The state of the game will dictate the date.
 
Why is the game not working on Shadow (cloud gaming platform) and do you plan to support it?
We believe cloud gaming platforms are a great way to enjoy DU if you want to play the game but don’t meet the proper PC specs or want to benefit from the latest hardware improvements without investing in upgrades for your gaming rig; however, we need to clarify that we are not yet officially supporting cloud gaming platforms, including Shadow. Our releases are not tested on these platforms or Windows emulations on Mac and Linux, and we can’t guarantee compatibility at this point. The game is still in beta, and we are focusing our efforts on native Windows PC support.
 
We plan to officially support these platforms at some point, and would like to ensure that when we do we are able to offer ongoing compatibility with adequate testing and collaboration with the platform holders to make a long-term commitment. 
 
We recently started working with a cloud gaming platform in an official manner, and we are hopeful to announce our official support of that platform soon. In the meantime, compatibility with cloud gaming platforms can’t be guaranteed. We log bugs and look at potential quick wins, but we can’t commit to a timeframe for fixing them. Please also note that there is a waiting list of one year to have access to one of the machines of Shadow, which makes debugging all the more difficult.
 
Will there be an updated roadmap?
At the moment, there is no plan to release an official roadmap with dates. We tried to explain why in the three devblogs. We’re changing many things in the way we develop DU, and it’s hard right now to have a clear idea of our future velocity. We don’t want to give you dates that we might not hold. We think it’s more important to have the freedom to adapt to your feedback rather than trying to hit the dates on a public roadmap. We hope you will see this as a sign that things are changing for the better and that we’re being more realistic in our approach.
 
Why don’t we have more frequent releases?
Dual Universe is an extremely complex game to develop. Many of the systems we have already in place are interdependent, and changing or adding a feature has ripple effects on other features and systems both in terms of code and in terms of feature design. For example, RDMS has to be carefully considered in many things we do, as does  the role of organizations in the introduction of new features, etc. Most of the tech we use is custom and not off-the-shelf. It’s one of the secret sauces of the game, and it also makes features much more difficult to work on because we develop the tech AND the features at the same time.
 
Now, with the introduction of the PTS, we hope to make more frequent releases, including releases of prototypes, such as the Lua technology for screen units. How frequently will depend on what goes in these releases and how much work needs to be done after we receive feedback from the PTS. We estimate that you can expect three to four additional major releases in 2021, and smaller releases in-between, but that’s only a ballpark estimate for now.
 
What’s going on with long-standing beta bugs? Are you going to fix them?
Yes we will fix them as quickly as possible although we aren’t able to pinpoint an exact date. Some bugs are easier to squash than others, and some even require a rework of an entire complete backend system to resolve. These processes need to be scheduled accordingly, also taking into account that we want to avoid reworking the same thing multiple times if we suspect that the development of an upcoming feature will force us to rework the same system again. The more critical the bug, the higher the priority. When we’re focused on fixing bugs,  that means we’re not working on the plan we presented to you, so it’s a balancing act. We wish we could give you a list of bugs and a timeframe for each one, but that would be highly unrealistic. These bugs are not being forgotten, that’s the best we can tell you right now.
 
Can we expect a more frequent communication from Novaquark?
We’d love to, just understand that the frequency of our communications really depends on the cadence of the game releases. The way it works is that as soon as the content of a new release is established (at least a content draft), we sit down and make a plan for how and when we’re going to talk about these features/this content. Often we have to wait until a feature is stable enough in terms of game design and/or coding to be able to talk about it or show it, as a feature can evolve a lot along the development process and the unfolding of our sprints. We simply want to ensure that the information we give you isn't misleading, as early communication means the end result may differ significantly once development is complete and the feature is released.
So between releases, there is indeed a communication gap. 
 
There are different general topics we could discuss between releases, but they wouldn’t really bring anything concrete to the table and that communication could be seen as shallow and vague. It’s actually an interesting topic we’d like to explore with you: what is it exactly that you expect in terms of communication? How can we balance having meaningful content to present with what seems to be the need of our players to see ongoing communication? Based on reactions we’ve seen in the past, we  believe that communicating simply for the sake of it when we have nothing really new to talk about is never well-received.
 
What about PvE? Are you planning to add PvE features to make the game more varied?
Our current focus is on enabling emergent content between players. PvE is not one of our priorities at the moment. This doesn’t mean that it won’t ever come to the game, but it is not going to be added before the official release of the game. That said, one could potentially consider the challenges that we’re currently working on as some form of PvE, though not in the sense that you’ll be shooting NPCs or wildlife.
 
Will we see a return of NQ employee Interviews and AMAs?
We would love to do things like livestreams and AMAs again when the time is right. We feel like these formats are better suited when there is a clearly defined topic to focus the discussion, such as a major release for instance. It is duly noted that these interactions with the community are appreciated, and we will include them whenever possible.
 
You mentioned the changes in the industry gameplay, but it wasn’t clear if schematics will stay or go?
The honest answer is that we don’t know yet. When we introduced schematics, it was a major disturbance in the forc… in the economy of the game.  We don’t want to rush into more changes after that, especially given that players invested a lot of hard-earned quanta in buying them. Removing schematics is ONE of the options we’re looking at, as well as changing their prices or adding more recipes. Reverting to the way it was before the introduction of schematics is also on the table. We know we want to do something with the current state of the industry to add back some of the fun that was taken away with 0.23, but how exactly we’ll do it is yet to be decided.  
 
Is there going to be a wipe?
We see that the debate on the topic has been pretty hot in the community for a while, and it’s about the same at Novaquark. We’re uncertain if the changes we are planning to introduce will require a wipe or not, and we’ve started (intense) internal discussions on the topic. Our priority is to try to preserve the time and effort that our players have put in the game since the beta started. Once we’ve got a better idea of how much the changes we discussed in the third  “Future of DU” devblog will impact the game’s economy, we’ll make a decision. If there is a wipe (and it’s a big IF), it may be a partial one only affecting certain aspects of the universe. Our  priority will be to mitigate the impact for long-time players.

Join us in our feedback thread here!
 

So asteroids will be spawned in space by NQ. To find them you need to sus out clues, probably do some cypher puzzle, and then after a certain time the location is announced by NQ.

Why does NQ need to personally handle this? Is this really emergent gameplay?
 
It'll basically just be like the last event, only with asteroids and in pvp space. Whether or not you need to solve a puzzle for this it'll still be only available to the the most powerful org. If it's done one asteroid at a time, it'll be a complete shitshow.

I myself imagined the implementation of asteroids to be some sort of massive asteroid field in space, an actual geographical location, or locations. Right now there's absolutely nothing in space, and no reason to explore or travel. If there were large asteroid fields, they could be used as for instance, "planets in space", with areas within it likely to be claimed for strategic purposes and such.

Really just feels like a recycled NQ strategy. Failed attempt at populating space.

PART THREE: FINDING THE FUN 
 
In this third and final segment of this series, we’ll take a look at Dual Universe gameplay and how we’re aiming to improve it. There’s a delicate balance to strike between staying as true as we can to the original vision, making smart design and production choices, taking players’ feedback into consideration, and creating more opportunities for community engagement. The game needs to be challenging but, most of all, fun. It can be a tall order sometimes, but not an impossible goal. 
 
This is far from being a comprehensive list of everything we’re working on, but we think it’s a good starting point for sparking conversation with the community. You’ll also notice that we have intentionally stayed away from precise timeframes. We would rather stay flexible and give ourselves the opportunity to revise our plans based on the feedback of players. 
 
Now, let’s get to the good stuff!
 

BREAKING THE MONOTONY 

Even if the main pillars of the game aren’t quite finished yet, the launch of the beta allowed us to see how the various systems work together, how fun they are, and what actually works or sometimes doesn’t.
 
Analyzing data on player behavior and reading the copious amount of feedback we receive (thanks for that!) have pointed to two main objectives we’ll be addressing in the coming months (in addition to continuing to fix bugs and balancing issues). These are: 
 
First, emend gameplay loops that are tedious for some players. We call it “fixing the player routine”, so that playing DU doesn’t feel like “going to work”. Up the stakes, adding meaningful opportunities for conflict so that the in-game economy, social components, and building aspects come together. 
  Some elements of gameplay are more fun than others in Dual Universe. Mining can often be seen as a must-do for many new players, and because it is perceived as mandatory it can rapidly feel tedious. Earning quanta is fundamental. When we launched beta, it seemed like mining was almost the only way to get money, especially for new players who didn’t have much in the way of resources or allies. 
 
To make it more interesting with a real sense of progression over time, here is the high-level plan:
 
Make it easier for newcomers to gather resources from the surface of planets without the need to dig; Then, transition players to deploying mining units once they’ve claimed a territory. Mining units will supply a steady stream of ore, depending on the specifics of the tiles the player has claimed. These mining units come in tiers and should add a sense of progression even to early mining. There will also be a production optimization gameplay if you want to use several mining units. For players who want to specialize in mining, we will introduce asteroid mining. Think of asteroids as epic mining with high reward potential. Asteroids will be spawned in the universe. Players will be able to scan clues in space to discover where they’re located. Some asteroids will contain not just regular ores, but also rare and valuable ones. Once discovered, there will be a delay before their location is broadcast to all players. This is an opportunity for explorers who find these asteroids to reap their resources first or monetize their location. The control of valuable asteroids will also create opportunities for combat, information trading, and collaboration between players. Please also note there will be asteroids in safe zones with lower-value ores.
  THE QUEST FOR QUANTA   
Another way for players to earn quanta is the previously-announced Mission System, coming in version 0.25. It will include two components: a job board to facilitate interactions between players (for example, “I need gold delivered to this location”), as well as a secure framework for player- and NQ-created hauling missions. We hope that this will kindle the game’s economy with increased specialization and proper tools for exchanges between players. The upcoming introduction of in-game challenges will also add fun ways for players to earn cash. 
 
On that note, we plan to revise the way the markets work, considering different ways to improve connections and making it less painful to trade for goods. This should make markets more accessible and fluidify trade.
 
We are looking into how we can rebalance the industry. The reaction to changes introduced in 0.23 told us that there is more work needed here. The role of schematics is definitely one of the areas we’re looking at; whatever we do with schematics, we are particularly sensitive to making a fair move for players who have invested in buying them. 
 
Builders haven’t been forgotten. We just delivered new tools for them in 0.24, and we are already working on new ones that should let builders enhance their artistic arsenal to create more amazing constructs. We’re pretty excited about them, but should forewarn you that it may be some time before they appear as higher priority changes will take precedence. 
 
The first-time player experience will get a full overhaul to facilitate the onboarding of new players. We’re doing away with the long monologues from Aphelia and the length of time it took to get into the action. The tutorials will be more contextual, and the experience of new players should get them into the core gameplay faster. As it is now, new players sometimes need to travel long distances to find a tile free of neighbors and suitable for future expansion. The redesign will allow these new pioneers to start with their friends in a location of their choosing in a more streamlined fashion. They will also be able to select an outpost design and receive startup resources. 

STOKING THE PVP FIRES 
We know a lot of players want to hear about PvP. Once we’ve fixed the main gameplay loops, this will be the next thing we’ll tackle. Our goal is for space warfare to be one of the driving forces of the emergent gameplay, fueling the economy of the game, including for players who don’t want to directly partake in combat but might want to provide ships, ammunition, and services for those who do. 
 
While there are PVPers who are in it for the thrill of the pirate’s life, there are others who aren’t pirates so much as protectors who enjoy defender-type PVP scenarios. In its current state, PVP can be seen as gratuitous, devoid of reasons to fight beyond pillaging a bested ship’s cargo. The current PvP mechanics will be modified with the addition of construct shields and a rebalancing of weapons, among other things, as well as introducing territory control in space and, later, on planets. Controlling space territories will give players benefits such as the ability to acquire highly-lucrative space resources (i.e. rare gas, singularities) and a worthwhile reason for organizations and solo players to fight. Not only that, but you’ll be waging war in style with an array of new, unique cannons and skins. 
 
GLITZIER GRAPHICS
Admittedly, graphics improvements have been on the back burner for a while in favor of building the main gameplay systems. Upgrading the visual immersion has now taken a more prominent position in our priorities, the goal being to give more “life” to Dual Universe. 
 
This ongoing process began in 0.24 when we overhauled many of the assets used in world generation (i.e. trees, rocks, ground textures, etc.) We’ve also undertaken a big push on visual effects, with a slew of new and improved visual effects planned for gradual release in the near future. Continuing our efforts with the recent addition of new voxel textures for builders, we will freshen up many older elements in the game to bring coherence between older and newer assets, as well as between voxels and assets.
 
We are also investigating longer-term visual improvements. For some time, we’ve been working on prototypes for a new planet generation technology to make sure that our planets are interesting to explore. Before we can roll this out, we will be doing an overall pass on the existing planets, like Jago, with improved terrain and more varied environment assets. There is also a project to improve lighting with the inclusion of global illumination.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
Again, please remember that all these changes will be tested first on the public test server. The final versions of these features may vary depending on your feedback and our own thought  processes. In terms of timing, most of the “player routine” fixes are planned to be gradually introduced before the end of the summer while the space warfare and PvP revamp should begin rolling out sometime after.
 
As you hopefully see, a lot of these changes are based on your feedback and a more grounded, pragmatic approach to game design. We realize that many of these topics require additional explanations and that they will probably trigger more questions. We will answer them in due time, as we’re able, in future devblogs. Until then, we look forward to hearing your thoughts in this discussion thread. See you there! 
 

Everyone here has paid to be in this game one way or another and they have the right to offer feedback, post suggestions and join in on ANY conversation they like.  It is simply not your place to tell them otherwise.

Cookies and coffee to the left......

Discuss today's Devblog below! 

PART TWO: UNDER THE HOOD 

In our previous blog, we spoke about improvements we’re making to our processes in order to get more efficient use of our resources and deliver the best game possible. Today, we’re taking a look at operation costs and how we’re working to make improvements in that area, too. 

THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS 
The server and database architecture behind Dual Universe is new and quite complex. As we had about the game itself,  we had made assumptions about how much running a game like DU was going to cost in various areas. What we found was that our estimations proved to be far too conservative. We had to confront the actual cost of scaling up operating costs for a larger, global player base. And that’s okay. We have a plan. 
 
After reevaluation, we determined that some of our design decisions have had a major impact on our operational costs (i.e. what it costs to run the servers). In particular, databases are a major part of these costs. For example, because the world can be entirely edited and every edit needs to be stored in a database then communicated between the server and the clients, it eats a lot of our I/O allocations, which in turn increases our database costs. 
 
THE IMPACT ON UPDATES
The consequence is that, in the upcoming months, we will be rolling out significant backend improvements in order to optimize these operational costs. We made the conscious decision to keep pricing low in order to make the game more accessible for people who want to play, but that means that we need to keep operational costs in check. Developing these optimizations is time-consuming, but it is fundamental if we want to have a viable game as the playerbase continues to grow. 
 
It’s important to make players aware of this because some of our upcoming releases may not seem like much to you. While they won’t appear to include much in the way of new features, they will be updates to deploy these fundamental under-the-hood changes. For instance, the upcoming 0.25 release will be primarily focused on introducing a “game-changing” incremental storage mechanism for edits to the game world that will have a major positive impact on our database costs. The good news is that we think that some of these modifications will improve performance for the players.
 
Speaking of performance: that’s another area where we’ve been doing a lot of work, using the in-game telemetry to optimize areas where performance was dropping. There are several projects in the works to address performance. Although these may not seem particularly sexy when you read about them in the patch notes, the difference in how much better the game runs and feels while you’re playing should convince you it was worth the time and effort we spent on them. 
 
One example is the in-game screens. They ended up being quite popular among players, but the use of HTML for screen customization has proven to be quite a performance bottleneck in areas where there are a lot of screens. We recently started testing a new system using simple Lua draw commands instead of HTML to achieve the goal of screen customization. This change should seriously alleviate performance issues in areas with a lot of screens while providing the added benefit of unifying customization languages in a more user-friendly way.
 
There are other optimizations like this in our pipeline, and they will be presented in due time. 

MORE IN STORE
Tomorrow, in the third and final part of this series, we’ll talk about DU gameplay, and the challenges of maintaining a delicate balance between staying true to the original vision while taking player feedback into consideration. 
 
Discuss today's blog here!

I guess to start off, I didn't know it would really click with me because the game was primarily first person. I had a history of not being able to get into first-person games such as Goldeneye 007 and Elite Dangerous. However, this was balanced with my eagerness to find a good science fiction space MMO to call home. I was envisioning this game would let me explore the universe and encounter people and all sorts of things as well.
 
I also liked the concept because I was into Second Life, a sandbox virtual world that allows building. (I also found out about this game from a Second Life forum.) I also liked the somewhat vibrant colors - they seemed welcoming to me.
 
Despite it's faults I'm glad I played this game. I enjoyed my time in game and forums are entertaining as well. I am grateful for NovaQuark for this very unique experience they created.

If you want me to go to Alioth market 6 or 7 the price is doubled

I would like to put my thoughts on the CEO change out there as I actually feel a lot of this aligns with what I have been saying would be good for the game for a long time.
 
Right now, DU was forced into an early public release for what many expect will be funding needs. And it did not work out. The short-term thinking and rushed implementation of features has only done one thing, cause more delays and waste dev time because a lot needs to be redone.
 
NQ, by means of JC, kept a brave face, and kept saying that all would be well, that there were no signs that they would not be able to meet the end of 2021 target for a full release. The list of features to be done as well as the immense mountain of technical debt, bugs to be squashed, optimization and polish to be done simply make a release in the true sense of the word at best unlikely for the end of 2021.
 
Now, the vision of JC for the game is great but poses a lot of challenges that are extremely hard if not impossible to overcome. The idea of implementing several vastly different playstyles and preferences in one world by itself is tough, the technical challenges remain huge. JC the visionary could and did dream of his game and how it would all come together while JC the CEO of NQ needed to temper expectations and bring that vision down to a manageable and viable level. And that IMO is where things went wrong.
 
 
When I backed the game, shortly after Kickstart ended, I was certain (and had no issue with) that NQ would not be able to hit the December 2018 release as it was clearly unrealistic for a game this scale. When Alpha opening to backers was delayed by several months and we then found ourselves in pre-alpha and under NDA instead at the end of September 2017, it should have been clear it was never going to be possible to get a release done in about 12 months. Yet, it took NQ nearly a year to announce an updated roadmap which pushed release to the second half of 2020. That new release date was clearly still overly optimistic at best seeing the state of the game at the time.
 
Then a new studio opened in Canada, we can only guess as to why but a combination of using a better tax environment for software development, more access to talent and yes, they speak French there. We do not know the ins and outs of how the management structure worked/works but it seems that much of the decisions were made in Paris still. When the first studio lead left the same year JC moved to Canada.
 
With some fanfare a new backing round by investors was announced by JC in June 2019 and when looking at the normal timeline for Venture Capital investment this was a pretty standard Round A option that was taken after the initial seed. Crowd funding never played much of a role in all this with the eventual 2.5M or so being spent before it was received basically.
 
Around November 2019 and honestly very little actual progress later, still under NDA a new roadmap was released pushing the release out for another year to end of 2021. That roadmap still read more as a wish list of features and still seemed very optimistic to me as NQ still had to implement all main features outside of mining and building.
 
Then, 30th of April 2020, JC announced that the game would come out of NDA and go to public beta with subscriptions instead of the planned closed development up to release for backers only. That was the moment where some of us backers started to see signals that NQ was not doing great and needed to start generating revenue which was never the intention. Meanwhile NQ had been operating on a total budget of around 25Million since end of 2014 so it was only reasonable to assume they were running on debt which in itself is fine as long as you can pay interest and keep paying your bills.
 
In December the 0.23 patch dropped which caused much discontent and an exodus of players with changes which were really not bad in themselves, but the implementation was terrible and very superficial. NQ, again by means of JC, blamed the need for the changes on the small groups and solo players who did not use the markets and did everything themselves so that needed to change. Add several badly handled exploit fallouts to the mix and the fragile player base shrunk at an alarming rate. To me, this was a massive signal that JC the visionary was not able to separate from JC the project manager or JC the company president/CEO.
 
JC also said on several occasions that he saw no reason to assume that it would not possible to meet the release date on the roadmap of end 2021, anyone understanding the amount of work left to do and especially the list of feature JC brought in as “coming in the next year” towards the end of 2021shoudl have been a clear sign of the many red flags regarding hitting a 2021 release.
 
Then, as the next major update came around it was underwhelming at best and NQ had to spin missing their milestone by announcing that 0.24 would arrive in “phases”.
And so, here we are start of April and we know that JC has resigned as CEO with anew CEO being appointed in the person of Nicolas Granatino who also is the CEO of the main investor in NQ. And from here all we can do is speculate on what is next.
 
 
 
My hope is this:
Under new management the potential and promise of DU is acknowledged while at the same time the need for more time is established. A big factor in the assets of the game is the server tech which can be developed and licensed to third parties with potentially considerable revenue. For that reason, Novaquark will be receiving a fresh investment injection with a business savvy and financially qualified CEO at the helm. 
 
To achieve this, the company will need to go through a restructure and cut a lot of mid level ballast. I would really hope that NQ will have the balls to relabel the development to where it is, alpha, and postpone the scheduled release with a TBD new date.
 
Then spend time to fix what they have, work through the technical debt, stabilize the backend and improve their community facing communication to a point where we do not need details but do find NQ to actually listen and be responsive and not “be heard” and then hear nothing back. So many great suggestions and ideas have been lost because NQ has shown a chronic lack of engagement and interaction at even the most basic levels.
 
I have always said and still feel that DU has such massive potential and promise as well as will be able to appeal to many different play styles and ideas but NQ as it was, has never really shown the ability to make that happen. I hope that this change is not the end of the company (despite the "letter", I would not disregard that option yet) but a new start in making that potential come alive and a reality.
 
 
I really feel NQ (and with it DU) has a chance here to recover and grow. From where we now are and for it to work, NQ needs to do their part in showing progress and improvement in many ways while we, as the community, need to start with giving them the space to do that and then get past what was and work with what is to come..
 
 
Let's have a good discussion here and not dwell on the past, we're all here because we have a passion for DU and the only way DU will stay alive is for "new NQ" to be able to make it happen. 

When creating artwork, you use familiar tools like Adobe Illustrator. That's how I created the Bacterium pets and then I used CSS to animate them and make them breathe. If I can't import vectors to display them on screen then I cannot work with my existing tools. You'll find that many other creators will share my feelings on this.

For those that havent read:
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/22565-changes-to-lua-screen-units/
 
My entire range of products in-game is based on HTML screens and CSS animations. It would not be feasible to rewrite them in any amount of time that would make it worthwhile. The new LUA based drawing features are extremely limited. For example, a large part of what makes my Bacterium product look realistic is the use of CSS animation on SVGs. Most crucially, the ability to use existing skillset (HTML/CSS) and familiar tools (SVG creation outside of the game e.g. Adobe Illustrator) are what make my products possible within the already tight limitations of DU.
 
I don't want to be dramatic, because I know its important to be constructive when giving feedback but if you remove support for HTML on screens, I'm out. Hundreds of hours of work will have been wasted and the key element that attracted me to this game will have been lost.
 
HTML/CSS is an existing technology that attracts creators becuase they can use existing skillsets. Removing it is too greater loss. If anyone else feels this way, please comment below.
 
EDIT
Can I just give an example of the sort of thing I am regularly doing on screens so you can understand how unachievable it will be using the new LUA commands:
 
My Bacterium product (https://du-creators.org/makers/NoxCorp/ship/NoxCorp Bacterium) uses animated SVGs inside <DIV> containers that are then animated to move around and transformed in 3 dimensions using CSS. This can all be achieved in around 30,000 characters of HTML/SVG markup and CSS. There are no amount of "useful drawing commands" that can offer this kind of flexibility.

Facepalm. 

So I'm 3 days new today. I had never heard about this game til it popped up on YouTube recommended when I was searching out Star Citizen.
Space you say? Build your own ships you say?  How could I say no?  SO I gave the 3 month subscription a shot.  Being a successful avatar in Second Life gave me the ability to drop some of that good fortune into Star Citizen. SO it only seems natural this would be a perfect fit for me... somewhere between the two.  I would say the game does remind me of the earliest days in Second Life, some of the same problems and some of the same hopes for something still to come.
Unfortunately, I came in the same day someone else was stepping down.  So who knows were I will be when my initial subscription ends..  I dont break easy so I doubt the learning curve will get me.  In SL, I owned (Rented Servers) 30+private islands and was a decent in-game script hack. Im hoping I can get my teeth into some scripting in Dual Universe soon too, I have a bunch of idea's, but I need to find the scripting limitations first ...........I have 87 days left in my subscription  You have 87 days to tolerate me

This thread has derailed pretty hard. As the original topic seems to have ended, I am locking this. 

I really wouldnt be surprised lol.  I have been arguing on and off with this lot for years.  Very few of the main negative posters on here play the game, nor have they done for some time.  Just people who want to see the game fail so they can say - "I told you so"