Maxim Kammerer

The main issue with tax is that it is in direct conflict with one of the foundations of this game. Player created persistent content..

.

The problem is not the possibility of losing stuff but arbitrary changes of the corresponding rules.
 
The owners of this stuff will not be excited and most probably leave forever and tell everybody to stay away from DU. If too many players leave and not enough new players come in there will be no game for you to pop back in. So make sure you enjoy the salvaging party. It could be the last thing you do in the game.

I have it on good authority that one of the straws that broke the camel's back was that JC actually had the brilliant idea to hire actual designers as "players" and let them build cities in game. For me, the big problem with JC has always been he only saw the end goal, he never considered or even thought about the way to get there and only found it's a tad more complex than he though once it was too late.

JC was famous for basicaly ignoring or brushing aside anything that counteerd his "vision" with the argument that it was just not understood. It seemsed he never once considered all these valid arguments and discussions might have merit and be actually beneficial for him and the progress of the game if he would not just "hear us" but would actually listen.

Unfortunately, from the last VLOG it would seem that mindset is still very much alive in NQ. They hear what we are saying but fail to listen and thus it is actually them who do not understand or get what is being said. The many instances in the VLOG where what NQ states they believe we are saying or what we are suggesting show the disconnect between what they hear and what we are telling them is quite massive. And IMO a big reason for that is that NQ _still_ refuses to actually engage with us in any meeaningful way.

But it gets harder and harder to guess what this "certain way" is. For a long time it looked like building pretty constructs is part of it. Now the builders get punished with a tax or expropriation. If everything that players do might finally be turned against them than they will stop playing at all.

But it gets harder and harder to guess what this "certain way" is. For a long time it looked like building pretty constructs is part of it. Now the builders get punished with a tax or expropriation. If everything that players do might finally be turned against them than they will stop playing at all.

The implementation turns it into a problem. Losing your stuff if you don't pay upkeep would be OK if implemented or at least clearly communicated from the beginning of 'beta'. But it wasn't and NQ even encouraged building entire cities that don't generate any income. Now, after using these eye candies for marketing, NQ decides to turn them into money sinks and I guess many owners don't even know it. All those monuments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

The obvious reaction is moving all assets to Sanctuary and build temporary mining outposts on other planets and moons only. Than NQ will be once more surprised that we don't play the game as intended and come up with the next crazy idea.

The obvious reaction is moving all assets to Sanctuary and build temporary mining outposts on other planets and moons only. Than NQ will be once more surprised that we don't play the game as intended and come up with the next crazy idea.

Especially for new players, I wonder what they are supposed to do other than vacuum rocks... 
 
Setting up a base on Sanctuary? Enjoy trekking even further since it's now the only real "safe zone" and everyone will move their shit there. 
No point in going to Alioth, you can't afford the taxes as a fresh player and the "exploration" part of the game is gone now that there's no ore to mine.
No point running missions until you can get a proper ship.
No way to PvP or mine asteroids without a space ship either, and as a new player you aren't going to win any PvP encounter in this game's poorly conceived idea of "open world" PvP (inherently asymmetrical conflict).  
 
All because they decided to bury ore absurdly deep and turn their game into a mole sim. They didn't have to do that.
 
Now instead of "mole sim" it becomes a "lube up your miners and wait" sim. 
 
Fortunately, we'll be able to see how all this works out soon, there's little chance they delay the update for more tweaks. They've never adapted to player criticism before and I have no reason to believe they will now, either.

Some might come back for the gold rush. But most will leave forever.

Some might come back for the gold rush. But most will leave forever.

That doesn't stop NQ from pushing us in this direction and nerfing solo gameplay is much easier than implementing the required tools..

The question is, how many of those inactive tiles are players just waiting for a game that is fun to play?
To me at least, it seems for sure that a much higher percentage of them will never return and cancel the subscription once they start losing tiles for not being good citizens and playing the game at the frequency and style dictated by NQ.

In order to prevent a new wave of disappointment such an advertising push would need to be honest. That includes that the game must be advertised as what it currently is - an alpha version. But that will not happen.

I'm afraid that's too reasonable for DU.

I was thinking about the territory taxes:
 
Could the TU's be set on a timer to be active, just like when you sell things.
-7 days 150k
-30 days 500k
-90 days 1000k (the infamous 1 mill)
(maybe tweak it to 1mill for 45 days and 1.5 mill for 90 days)
 
-Have a seperate tab for that of course to manage the TU's
-And we can put them on auto-extend with a simple on/off switch.
-Have the switch in the map menu also for easy management.
-No adding of time, so if you got a territory for 150K, make some quanta, and you want to extend it to 30 days. It starts with the 30 days and doesnt add up to the days you have left on your timer
 
-After the timer reaches zero, your TU will become abandoned (blue coloured??), So its even easier for the next player to grab your tile. I mean, if there is a TU unit there, there must be treasure. So hunting and using hovers to scout planets now becomes a game, since we cant see TU's from to high up. (Or hide your TU)
-Have the scanner rework to detect elements. So even if you have an underground base and you've lost the territory. It is still hidden and must be found first before be able to be reclaimed. This way you can log in after 8 months or so and still have your secret base somewhere and reclaim it yourself. (Have abandoned structures not show up on radar, only on scanner)
 
Since we cant no more drop in and speedmine, but have to set up stuff that will prolly go at a slow rate. This will solve many things I think.
Also, this way even players that quit can hold on to their cities with ease for a longer period of time.
But when it comes to hogging 100s of tiles cuz you have found a mega there, it will cost you.
 
I have 3 tiles outside of my sanct tile (I live on a space base). They are not because of megas, but because of much random ore on them. I barely even visit the tiles for mining because I mine where ever I am closest to. So its unneccisary hogging of tiles on my part. So its true that taxes will help a little, but I do not think it should be too pricey!
 
So what you guys n girls think of this?

This whole tax thing maybe be the end for me. I pay a subscription to play. Now they want me to work in game to keep what I have. I do that in IRL. I play to have fun. Not to do more work.

@Nayropux I plan DU, the game, around my real life, not the other way around. So do most DU players, the ones you do NOT see very often. They find a window of a couple hours of free time at their convenience, log in, dig in a tile, get the ore, use it at their leisure, when they want to.
Autominers throw all that out the window. Suddenly, DU becomes something you need to adjust your real life around. I've done that in the past, with other MMOs, and it was horrible. Not going to do that, ever, again, no matter how interesting a game might be.
I don't want a game to tell me when to log in and punish me if I can't. I don't want to set alarms and drop everything else in real life just to keep what I already own in a game.
If autominers are implemented the way they are on PTS right now, I'll cancel my DU subscriptions and let characters expire. There are many, many other games around which would be more fun to play and won't force me to log in at specific times, risking to lose my assets if I don't.

According to Gottchar himself it's like 30-60min a day, pretty much every day (every 35 hours with max skills). Also you're just assuming 7 tiles, but that's not optimal and not how Gottchar was calculating it all. You also need the tiles around those 7 tiles for optimal results, and other factors. His exact words:
 
That leaves you with ~700.000 worth of ore if you want to use it yourself. IF you can find the ideal patch.
 
A LOT of players are solo players, only choosing (sometimes) when they do stuff with others. One of the more relaxing activities in DU is mining in a tile that doesn't have anyone near it, just you with the soil and ore! So Zen! ? The current implementation of the asteroid system is anything but relaxing nor Zen. When I want to go mining in pvp space for rich rewards, I can, but relaxed mining with a ton of others around, I cannot do anymore.
 
If the reason for phasing out planet mining is saving money on server resources for the always persistent ant tunnels we've dug under there. There is a very simple, yet effective solution. Make an asteroid belt that goes through both the safe zone and pvp space. Just create tens of thousands of asteroids, the moment someone mines or terraforms the first voxel on an asteroid a 7 day timer starts to run, after which the asteroid despawns and a new rock spawns. In safe zone you'll have access to everything, but the higher tier ores are more abundant in pvp space. There are many variations of this concept possible, instead of automatically despawning and respawning you can have an attached missioning system where if an asteroid has more then x amount of tunnels (costs x amount of data on the server) it's marked as a missioning target by Aphellia, 90% of the asteroid ore needs to be mined out and then a charge set at the center of the asteroid, which despawns it. You get Y amount of quanta based on how bad the asteroid is on the server (higher load, more quanta). Or asteroids do not automagically respawn, respawn only happens every x months or once a year.
 
There are a ton of options which don't require us to run like a bunch of lemmings on an asteroid and then quickly mine it out as fast as possible. That sounds to much like work, just like having to log in every day or every 1.5 days to set 7-10 autominers via an annoying mini game...
 

Loot with no risk?
 
What happened to the Risk vs. Reward thingy

Really an important point. Building factories was fun. They could have balanced the mechanic without making the engaging aspects so tedious, but they never listened to their players telling them "hey, this is fun, please don't nerf this entirely". Instead of adding depth to create balance, they removed depth. 
 
Personally, I also liked the exploration required to seek out nodes -- even though I wasn't a fan of the mining mechanic itself (they didn't have to bury ore so deep...no one forced them to do that).
 
It wasn't the best sense of adventure and discovery, but it gave me something to use my ship for...since I find combat in DU really dull, clunky, and poorly balanced. If I want a real PvP experience I play a competitive PvP game built by people with a much better sense of game design. DU isn't that, not yet. 
 
With Demeter, my ship is a train to move shit to and from a market. Is there any real need to leave my tile? To mine asteroids and that's pretty much it? 
 
Also, trickle down economics isn't really a thing.
 
Someone can pull billions of quanta out of the game and most of it will sit in their wallets forever or get dumped into schematics. It doesn't always circulate. 
 
So...if NQ balances the game for the wealthy, established players it has now, it creates a feedback loop where it becomes harder and harder for new players to get established...that old wealth doesn't go anywhere, it rots in wallets and evaporates as accounts unsub or through taxes. 

But it was at least possible to build and run large factories just for fun - to optimize it for maximum efficiency, speed or flexibility and than to see everything running as planned. NQ killed that kind of gameplay because it doesn't fit to a vision of their game that will never become reality.

You need a subscription at any time, if you don't have one, you lose your territory/constructs after 4 weeks. Done. No taxes necessary.

Need a 3rd option. Affordable taxes! because we really do need a reasonable way to clear out long time inactive or game abandoned player Zones!