Maxim Kammerer

So many economic exploits affected the current economy:  item duplication bugs, item teleportation bugs, the ability to circumvent vehicle physics to move heavy loads, market 13 dropping parts of the market database, dev typos reducing endgame resources to 1% of expected opportunity cost.
 
so many expected mechanical features skewing the market: alt-f4 making stopping loads too easy (different from above), all ores having the opportunity cost of PvE ores, massive stockpiles from when mechanics were easier, the mods being really easy with ship teleportations, test server leak after test server leak spoiling real server exploration, and the devs clumsy with events.
 
————
 
this is game has had more T20 style events in 6 months, than EVE gets in 6 years (at least in game economic fallout, and in some cases even the devs fault).  It would look downright silly to not wipe.  
 
Though honestly I don’t think it will do much to bring people back, current mechanics are so grindy/slow that you can argue for this being the grindiest survival game.  I don’t think a returning player will want to work through that mess.

No.

The moment when your nanoformer is more advanced than the machine that has a function like melter or refiner and doesn't work without a recipe.
No seriously, the machines should be able to do at least what your nanoformer can do.

As much as I still hope that DU will succeed some day - it is much worse compared to SC. Chris Roberts has decades of experience in game design and an insane budget for a crowd founded project. NQ has no experiences and maybe already run out of cash. The NQ guys are so smart that they seem to think they don't need to consult experts. In the result they are wasting time and money reinventing the wheel and repeating all errros that have been made in game history. There are problems everywhere - in their internal processes, in the game tech, in the game design and even in the vision of the final game. They have a very long way to go.

Let's be fair, DU is mostly a building game, at least currently.. besides maybe being a mining simulator

Dear NQ, 
 
Please for the love Quanta, please increase the copy/paste size limits. 
 
It is the single most annoying aspect of build large ships. 
 
Love, 
Wadiss. xoxo

In fact, in the darkest latest hours of the night, I sometimes wonder if any of the devs are still actually there or have we just been pissing into the wind all by our lonesomes for three days and they’ve all moved on to other projects...
 
Just kidding, folks... 
cue Vsauce music: Or am I?

So the below obviously all my opinion/thoughts only.. even when the writing is on the wall in a pretty bold typeface 
 
 
Monday came and went. NQ does not care and have closed this issue internally. They think and hope that by ignoring it, it will just go away and the comments will end. They expect us to be good kids and let them off the hook once again. The level of ignorance and disrespect is astounding. But I expect they stopped reading these threads (if they ever did) as .. they could not care less and will just ride it out until if blows over again. The few that can and likely would want to engage are probably told to step back and stay out of the discussion.
 
 
Today is the day that the additional month subscription runs out for the ones that were eligible. It would be interesting to see what happens next. I'm guessing NQ may actually silently allow subs to continue for a bit in the hopes some will (eventually) resub. They're down to tricks to try and keep the player count up. Meanwhile, going into month 6 of "beta", claimed tiles count on Sanctuary is pretty much stuck around 35K (Alioth is well behind at below 30K) and with 20K+ backers and their 40-60K beta keys, 60-80K potential player accounts that all play free through beta, it is fair to question the viability of the game as far as revenue. NQ won't say obviously, but the numbers we have and see speak volumes. Two offices in very expensive locations, around 100 staff, external partners and massive server infrastructure cost will roll around what I'd expect to be substantial 6 figure monthly operating cost at least.
 
 
As I see it, DU will be the next Landmark, it will continue to run for a bit longer and then the announcement comes that he servers wil be shut down and the company dissolved. NQ will be the next in line of indie devs with a dream but lacking the ability to actually make it work, killing their own game by stacking one mistake onto the next without ever really taking ownership and ignoring their player base. At this point, I have my doubts whether they can make it to the end of the year, I see nothing that makes my think they might at this point.
 
Frankly, when the end comes, they only have themselves to blame. Their lack of engagement, responsiveness and support as well as their indecisiveness and failure to utilize and understand their userbase (and take them serious) is what will have done them in.
 
And yes, I hope I am wrong in having this rather bleak outlook here and NQ has a trick up their sleeve we don't know about to pull through and deliver the game they say they will. But the numbers just do not add up. DU deserves and has the potential to be better but I just fear NQ is not the company capable to deliver.
 

As much as I still hope that DU will succeed some day - it is much worse compared to SC. Chris Roberts has decades of experience in game design and an insane budget for a crowd founded project. NQ has no experiences and maybe already run out of cash. The NQ guys are so smart that they seem to think they don't need to consult experts. In the result they are wasting time and money reinventing the wheel and repeating all errros that have been made in game history. There are problems everywhere - in their internal processes, in the game tech, in the game design and even in the vision of the final game. They have a very long way to go.

Allowing magic blueprints to respawn stuff would just carry forward the exploits. People would just pack constructs with honeycomb , elements etc so they can just respawn their wealth instantly. Talent points are a fine carry forward as those are just a time sink. Empty blueprints so once you acquire the materials you can reproduce your creative work without having to redo all the voxelmancy etc is fine too.
 
If they have the professionalism to wipe , then they should do it simply by allowing blueprints (not magical) , talent points to carry forward. If they want to keep the premise of a player run economy they should drop the ore/item bots as well forever only leaving schematic selling bots (they could adjust schematic pricing to better reflect that new less inflated by bots world). Bots however are their own topic and generally outside the scope of WHY they need to commit to a wipe at some point in Beta.
 
NQ allowing this exploit to go on unanswered in a no wipe scenario is flat out unacceptable. They should have rolled back immediately. Failing that they should have taken immediate action to remove ill gotten schematics. Failing that they now need to schedule and openly declare there will be a wipe at some point in beta with a commitment that any future problems like this will be handled correctly. 

I'm curious how many think it's super cool that those who noticed (probably)/were in the know(conspiracy mode) and took full advantage of NQ's unplanned mistake (probably) /favour for insider-pals (conspiracy mode)  and used, say, 2 billion ℏ to purchase schematics now have 200 billion ℏ worth of assets and have put themselves so far ahead as to be forever beyond reach of any other aspiring players or even groups.... ?

I love the fact that constructs in Starbase Alpha suffer stress-load from gravity and acceleration (yeah, I know, gravity IS acceleration) and you have to build your constructs to be able to absorb the stresses due to mass and thrust.
Very cool! Would put an end to those 1km tall single voxel towers on Alioth

If they have the necessary metadata, part of my little essay questioned whether they have. This is why this is so disturbing, it transcends the event itself and gives us an unsettling insight into what is and is not possible, obviously the decision making speaks for itself but that is damned disturbing too.

This isn't a game issue, this is a company issue and that is worse in my opinion.

From my point of view definitely worse. Before 0.23 it was quite easy to make profit on the markets. Just build a universal T1/T2 factory, watch the markets and than produce and sell produtcs with high margin. With 0.23 prices nosedived because industrial players tried to sell all their stock (even with loss) to get the schematics they needed to restart production. Than it loked like the markets would slowly recover. I was able to buy raw materials and sell products with profit. Not a quarter as good as 0.23 but better than nothing.
 
But in the last two weeks I sold almost nothing anymore (on different markets on Madis) - even at costs of goods. There are still products that might sell quite well. But since 0.23 I need to buy schematics in order to switch to a new product and with the latest developent on the markets I can't expect a return of investment. Thus I stopped production for now and wait for the markets to recover or collapse completely.

From my point of view definitely worse. Before 0.23 it was quite easy to make profit on the markets. Just build a universal T1/T2 factory, watch the markets and than produce and sell produtcs with high margin. With 0.23 prices nosedived because industrial players tried to sell all their stock (even with loss) to get the schematics they needed to restart production. Than it loked like the markets would slowly recover. I was able to buy raw materials and sell products with profit. Not a quarter as good as 0.23 but better than nothing.
 
But in the last two weeks I sold almost nothing anymore (on different markets on Madis) - even at costs of goods. There are still products that might sell quite well. But since 0.23 I need to buy schematics in order to switch to a new product and with the latest developent on the markets I can't expect a return of investment. Thus I stopped production for now and wait for the markets to recover or collapse completely.

yes please - do your research. all those videos you provided don't prove that magnetism=gravity. If you got any evidence and proof please visit https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/physics/

Without enough Quanta circulating you can wait forever for your products to be sold. Even with bots as source of cash there is currently no chance to get 4x the ore sales value. With a lot of products you can't even make profit at all because they have market prices far below their ore sales value.
 
That is wrong in theory (with money sinks (e.g. schematics) there must be corresponding sources for cash) and in practice (deflation is still ongoing).

WHy would the AI wake us up just so that we can kill ourselves, though? Creating a new civilizaion but not even bringing laws and police from the old one is Junior-high school level stupid...

Aphelia or whoever is AS not AI. The whole premise  of the lore of this game was thought up over several rounds of some stout beverages in a bar, taken down on the back of a napkin and hasn't been readdressed since.

Good idea although I wonder what it would take to implement.
 
I'd also like to see weapon hits (in unsafe zone) and zero-damage hits (in the safe zone) raise an event in the core reporting what was hit and the calculated (pre-safe) damage. That would really be useful for training.

Without enough Quanta circulating you can wait forever for your products to be sold. Even with bots as source of cash there is currently no chance to get 4x the ore sales value. With a lot of products you can't even make profit at all because they have market prices far below their ore sales value.
 
That is wrong in theory (with money sinks (e.g. schematics) there must be corresponding sources for cash) and in practice (deflation is still ongoing).

Sorry, I didn't realize that you are talking about a game you are dreaming of and not the game we have and will have in the forseeable future.

Currently there are just two ways to make money in DU:
 
1. by getting the daily 150 kℎ
2. by mining and selling ore to bots
 
All other ways to 'make money' just mean that other players make money for you. If they stop doing it, because they are bored to death, you will need to do it yourself. Than you have even less time to do everything you want to do because you are mining all day long.

Currently there are just two ways to make money in DU:
 
1. by getting the daily 150 kℎ
2. by mining and selling ore to bots
 
All other ways to 'make money' just mean that other players make money for you. If they stop doing it, because they are bored to death, you will need to do it yourself. Than you have even less time to do everything you want to do because you are mining all day long.

The mission system will only serve to bait people into pvp or to pay cut rate missions. You arent going to pay more than something is worth and the ones that seem worth it are liely going to be traps. If suddenly there are quests to transport anyone can do that. Missions to mine anyone can already do in a bot run market. PvP when you can already do that. Build when you can already do what it seek to achieve. The system changes nothing. The only reason for it is to pay people less then you would pay for it on the market or to exploit someone to their death for quick profit. JC even said so much on one of the live streams.
 
Territory Wars? Same thing it will destroy more than it helps the game. This isnt a 2d plane game Shadowbane where tons of population capped guilds and their sub guilds fight it out non stop taking 3-4 hours of grind fighting npcs to flip back into your forge and re-roll until you get prime gear and fight over mines with 100 people a night or dropping banes to steal a city with a royal rumble of guilds that show up to sanke it from you. DU is different in that all your neighbors are enemies. Everyone is an enemy. You can join the communist party I mean mega orgs 1 size fits all just a number but still the mega orgs dont even fight and they have everything so why should I be forced to fight all my neighbors? I dont care about the geopolitics of the game im just here to build and have a good time and not throw away $100+ in ship or cargo every time some pvper gets the jump on me. There is nothing to the PvP or TWs when they go live. It just pushes out more people from the game.
 
Why? Its not a PvP game they designed or want to force everyone to play as a communist miner giving everything away to other people who get rich off of your effort and dictate your playstyle or talents in game. I will never join a mega org no matter how much JC wants to punish me or design the game to kick me out the door if I dont. Its not JC's choice of how I play that is like the most fundamental basic gaming principals to giving players a choice and in this case your fole is dictated to you in the game design to mine and to fly then to build an industry to fight. As one or 3 people you are meant to have what seems like 10-25 people bare minimum to make all the basic ship parts alone with enough time to do just a few other things in the game with enough breathing room from machine demands or covering the cost of blueprints setting you to eat 100 parts before you break even which requires the little refined parts, which requires the pure and raw ore. Before you even do that it will take you 6 years of talent time locks to even do that, and even if you spec that between 10 people to do most of crafting it still cuts the grind down to just under a year. Seeing as the mining, piloting, industry, and crafting are all like about 8 years of grinding, sinks, time locks, up front investment beyond the insane numbers of containers needed for all steps its pretty beastly of a challenge that not having 25 people base makes even slightly profitable as an small org.
 
There will just be too big of a gap between the alpha backers, megaorgs, and people hoarding massive stockpiles. Anyone remember the thread a while back talking about how someone got access to their guilds supplies and they sat in horror as some other guild came in and they had no access to their stuff and some other org walked away with a couple billion in assets? Yeah those types of people who have "billions" sitting around who are destroying the market, sitting on enough ammo to last any kind of sustained war and seeing as PvP is hyenas in space prowling for kills what do they think is going to happen when suddenly they take Territory Wars live? All the coma people's territories are gone, all planetary bases are gone, anything outside alioth is gone. Nobody will ever build outside Alioth if it is even allowed to be a safe zone and since all those people who were in a coma or had their entire gameplay wiped out are going to quit.
 
SO is it worth it? Its what is going to happen. Kill off the game to make the neglected bastard children pvpers you brought in or keep the people who make and build and mine everything happy who make up the 75+% happy and continueing to play? This is a crafting game after all. If it werent then PvP would be more of a thing then the PvP community figuring out how best to kill off the rest of the game by stipping protections piece by piece and nobody wanting to enguage them and if they could there is no defenses to stop it. Nobody wanting to PvP in a supposed PvP game is not a good sign and an indicator of how badly designed this game is. There is no one thing you cant point at where the system is broken and going the wrong direction. Or that fixing any of it pretty much requires a complete direction shift to make it approachable to anyone. Designing a grind sink to defeat a player from lack of content is not a game at all. At best we have a home business sim with some muggers added to spice things up. There is no reason for the muggers to exist in the scenerio being there its just for show.