blazemonger

It's funny that several of us had a similar discussion prior to beta. We expected NQ to up their game once they effectively launched into EA and start taking people's money on subscriptions. Let's just say, the patterns we saw during (pre)alpha just continued post beta launch and currently, the exact same patterns are seen with regards to what will happen post "release", So no, I do not think anything will change which I do think will be a problem. NQ has one single chance left to make this game work and they will need to seriously step up and start acting like a studio with a released game. I just do not see that happening simply because I do not think NQ has the funding to do that. They will continue to lean on the few here to help others and will just continue in their established ways until the curtain falls. I'll happily eat my words, just like I said I'd be willing to do going into beta, if they prove me wrong.

Like a good few others, I believe that I have applied senisble logic to come to the conclusion NQ will wipe the game prior to what they wil call release. There is a few questions you can ask yourself which really only lead to that outcome. And I do not try and convince anyone to agree with me, I only share my thoughts and how I arrived there. And I do not see anyone who believes the wipe wil lhappen meet what you describe. If you want to provide arguments that for you would lead to a different outcome then feel free to do so, that is what discussion is about. Trying to paint those with a different opinion in a bad light, as your fluffy wording appears to do, is really bad form and uncalled for. No one here is trying to "inspire or destroy". We are just talking about our opinions and how we got there.

Disregarding his flaws and how he managed to derail development of the game, JC's departure from NQ pretty much left then without direction or vision.

You are way overthinking this, you fit the NQ culture very well I'd say .. Your reaction also seems to imply you choose to just go with whatever NQ tells you and take it for the truth, discarding anything to the contrary, no matter how logical it can be deducted. And you're perfectly entitled to do so, even when I find that to be very naive. But then continue and basically smear those who do objectively look at what is happening and apply what they know and have studied to it to come to what is far more an educated guess than a (wild) speculation seems well out of line. Obviously, I can't say you are including my opinion in your accusation here, but I would certainly not agree that I formed my opinion based on pure speculation. I have seen what is happening here way to often in the past decades and have been actively involved in such processes enough to be able to make a worst an educated guess, which as I see it is not speculation at all.

That and talking into a curtain or duvet tagged to a wall when recording a voiceover. A decent enough USB mic will set you back maybe $100 A good voice processing tool to get it ready for the video is maybe another $100

It seems NQ thinks that by holding back the announcmeent they can retain subscribers. My guess is that the few they have will have a higher likelyhood of remaining or returning post wipe if NQ does what they should have done by now and make the announcement. I simply do not see a reality in which NQ needs 7+ moonths to decide on a yes/no with regards to a wipe prior to release. And yes, they may have a few hundred subs right now, maybe even a few thousand, which relatively is just "a few" as they will need 6 digit subscriber counts to make the game viable. NQ may not have any legal obligation with regards to this, but certainly a moral and a "good business" one. I think that suggesting NQ is libel in any way of they wipe is nonsesne, saying they are not showing commitment and loyalty to their existing playerbase, certainly with their current attitude on this, is a fair argument to make.

In my analysis of the audio I heard a lot of noise that is typical for a low cost wireless mic and some serious noise coming from a badly built PC or a laptop with grounding issues.. I was actually abale to clean it up fairly decently with a specialized repair/restauration tool for audio but the background music from the game ruined any chance of doing a proper improved audio track as so much needed to be cut you get just snippets from that while he speaks.

Paying the subscription has one purpose, and that is gain access to the server. It's really that simple, you have no claim or right to anything but access to the server. So no, NQ does not owe you anything once they wipe. The reason why I keep saying that it would simply not make any sense to thinks NQ will not wipe at/around release as they would have said so by now and put this to bed. Having said that, it would be for each individual player to decide whether to keep their subscription active until NQ makes the announcmeent. That really is the only leverage you currently have. Personally I really think NQ is wrong in thinking that holding off on the announcment of what I honestly believe will be the inevitable wipe, will just work against them once it happens. I mean, think about it, if NQ would annouce they will wipe prior to release (and as I expect offer a 1-2 week headstart before the actual release date for backers and beta key holders choosing to take a subscription), that woudl then actually allow them a trial run of the release patchbeforfe that.. So they could effectively wipe - test the release patch in a "live PTS" situation to find any last minute issues - wipe again - headstart - release

I see no reason why a second star system would not be technically feasible outside of maybe the way to travel between them. I would indeed question NQ's ability to pay for such expansion as well as the risk it holds around spreading the player base too thin. I really do not see NQ add anything substantial to the game for release and they pretty much have said as much anyway. NQ being in the position I expect they are in will need to show substantial new subscribing player numbers coming in and staying to even be able to continue development past release. And they will have enough of a challenge scaling back up on their server infra to accommodate that. There is a healthy 5 figure player count with months (and in a good few cases many..) long free access to the game post release. That alone will drive up cost and the new subscribing players will need to pay for that as well. I'm not even sure NQ has the awareness of this and is preparing for it.

Not really unless: Lots on the exchange do not persist across the wipe On removal by request of the owner, the lot is not returned to the owner. If lots persist and are returned when a remove request is made, that would ba a serious exploit unless NQ prohibits the placement of elements on the lots. The "rules" are not in any way covering this. WHile true, there is better ways to do this, with a potentially lower cost and possible bigger exposure for players. Simple things like managed screens at markets like the ones CCP has in stations in EVE. Or setting up a "mall deck" as part of the biggest markets in the general Aphelia zone. The limitations that NQ is throwing up for the subkmissions kind of tell you how concerned they are with the impact just one of these has. And at the same time, having just one pretty much designates the location as a lag magnet due to traffic in and out of the site. Too complex IMO.. Use DU-C data in the exchange, players find screens, much like market terminals screens allow them to browse DU-C content When they see something they like, they can press a button and teleport to the DU-C location where they can shop the actual Blueprint. At the site the hosting player must have a "return to Exchange" pad or button Player returns to exchange with the blueprint All this is possible now with in game options and is very low cost in resources and dev time. It turns the idea of the exchange into a central hub for players to visit and shop at other players's locations in a simple and effective way. If successful, duplicating the concept to markets and/or districts is simple and again, low cost. If the idea of an ecxchange as it is not announced woudl be maintained, changing it to a simple mall on a square platform attached to existing markets is far more accessible, wil loffer more space, and will drive players to a more centralised location for trade and commerce. As with so many thing NQ does, and IMO, the base idea is not that bad, but the execution is not very well throught through and shows very short term thinking.

SO did the ideas from several others, including mine And this idea will effectively be a magnet for lag as there is one exchange and it may drive traffic to it in number, certainly early on The game UI engine/framework allows for webistes to be viewd on screens. We could in Alpha but it was disabled for "performance" and probably cost reasons. NQ could work withthe DU-creators owners to make it somewhat more modular, which probably mostly just needs different CSS for the in game purpose, not really all that complex. It could then offer teleport pads to bring you to the players site, allowing you to buy and take blueprints back. I do not see how that woudl be terribly complex or expensive to do. For this? As said, it's an existing featre of the tools they use fo rthe UI anyway (which is ahwt drives Lua and the screen as well) That is for NQ to cover, they could offer to compensate the designer of the site and manage it themselves or hire him to do it. I do not see how that woudl weigh it all that much on the overall picture, especialy relative to the cost it woudl involve I'll add the link in OP. I have posted my personal idea from back in 2020 severl times already when the exchange first appeared on our radar.. not that I expect NQ ever saw it then or bothered to see it now. I repeated some of my ideas around how the exchange could actually better integrate and server an actual purpose in relation to the existing player content already.

What would I do after the FTUE Wrong question, the correct questions is “what do you want to do” Driving the "follow the 'things to do' list " is the wrong approach for a sandbox MMO and NQ driving it just tells me they really do not understand the concept. Cooldown for sieges The answer is just one more "doing EVE half-baked" situation Hoe does a new Solar system change the single shard design Silly question which gets a very forced answer which in the end is just "it does not" Exploring the space market Question feels not real/fictional/fabricated and just there to spin towards promoting the exchange Safezones Pnce again, a "questionable" question with a fluffy answer which simply should be "nothing until TW comes" Runtime of the video 7:15 - ish Actual effective use of that time.. probably less than 10%

If these were used as exhibition centers where Aphelia organises frequent shows and (rotating) events then sure.. that might make more sense and I could actually se that be a thing that works.. I still feel that an idea like this but used to integrate du-creators into the game would be a far better idea. And the game would support doing that now.. BTW.. I tried cleaning up the audio but he source material is really low quality and is very "dirty" as far as noise and issues with background pops and stuff (I could see this being recorded on either a not so great wireless headset or on a system with some serious grounding issues). And as soon as you pump up the volume to EQ and compress it, those become painfully loud regardless of what you try.. I could not even repair it enough to make it usable unless igo do all that by hand, which is obviously not happening .

People needs to start understanding that what we have now is what will go to release and will be what we have for quite some time after, there will not be any further major changes and I do not expect there will be unless NQ manages to somehow get the game to attract many tens of thousands who not just show up, but stay for the next year or two OR find a healthy pot of gold with some investor. And while I completely disagree with what you suggest and think it is a terrible idea, even IF NQ would be willing to consider it, they will need a healthy 8 figure funding round to even start conceptualising such ideas. And if you think the current or eventual PVP community in the game will be able to raise that amount of funding, at that point they may as well do it themselves as they love to stay inside their own bubble and prefer to not be bothered by people who choose to play differently it seems. To achieve what you are looking for you will effectively have to remove a lot fo what makes DU the game it is as you will never be able to achieve the performance you are looking for otherwise.

While I appreciate the effort Nicodemus put into this, I still feel this exchange is not a good idea. It effectively DOES bypass the player driven content allready available IMO better player suggested alternatives exist FAR better player created alternatives exist For the scale and player pop NQ will have to be looking for/aiming at, this is extremel;y insufficient spacewise as this will probably fill up wel before the new players actually get to the point they can use the exchange and lock them out of that opportunity Lag will be a thing here.. a major thing I am stil not convinced this wil be a massive exploit loophole waiting to happen On a sidenote, The video _really_ shows the terrible lighting in DU very nicely. With an empty world, if not offline walkthrough, the framerate shown in the video is not great at best. Production wise, NQ please do better sound and record the voiceover properly, the quality here is really bad. The voice itself is fine but the recording is not..

That is just nonsense @Sycopata and I think you know it. For one, "waiting" to dive into PVP until you can afford losses IMO is actually a good strategy, do not put at risk that which you can't afford to lose. Also, PvE plares are not "latent PvP players". both playstyle have merit, can mix to some degree and frankly, in a game like DU specifically for PVP playstyles mostly will need to. If intended to be a serious response, I'd say that your post mostly just exposes you and how you think of people with different playstyles. Obviously you are entiled to your own opinions but here I could not disagree more.

@NQ-Ligo Let me start with saying that I appreciate the extra effort and work you are putting into the revamp in providing tools and reference for the Lua community for the game. I do want to get back to my request for a dump of the codex HTML for the game to an offline version which seems to have been left behind. And please do not take what I am about to say the wrong way, but I'd really like you to take off your "Lua Nerd" hat and look at what you are providing from a layman's perspective. What you will find is that it is way too complex and focused for your average joe who decided he wants to dabble in Lua. And the average Jose’s will far outnumber the Lua Nerds It is and will be very important for a simple and straight forward source of basic information to be available and the community will no doubt make sure that a nicely formatted webpage is there for that purpose. if we can just get our hands on the raw HTML as it's used in game for the codex. As I've said, the argument that maintaining this would mean extra work as that is simply not true, unless you mean you will not maintain the in-game codex. Creating the offline version from there is, or should be, a simple matter of "copy paste the codex HTML from the codebase to a separate file".

What IMO is sad is that NQ seems to think that not being honest and upfront about what seems blatantly obvious is a good idea. Since not acknowledging a no wipe is even worse and would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, keeping quiet on the fact the wipe is happening is just.. trying to remain as generic as possible here ..very silly at this point.

This and org bookmarks have been asked for since pre alpha basically.. so about 5 years now.. As there has never been a single reference to it, even in acknowledging the fact this is something that clearly is wanted, I guess NQ disagrees.

VoIP, Character creation and customisation and Mail are probably the big ones for me. For a game pitched and intended to be all about community and collaboration, the tools to achiev that in game are at best underdeveloped and mostly not there.

Thank for the update. But I can't say I find this a very satisfying answer. A straight text/raw HTML dump on every patch for the codex will be good, we are well capable, and many probably will, add styling ourselves. Stop overthinking this please, stop thinking you need to make it all fancy and shiny, especially for this. The mockup is nice and may be useful for some but IMO it overshoots the simple and much broader ask for a simple list of the API calls

Please, pretty please.. provide an offline codex or at least the scripting section. It's HTML anyway so should not be that hard .. having to go in and out of the in game one is not very nice.

NQ has yet to understand these simple truths: If you try and please everyone, you will please noone. When you create according to what you like/want, you will be surprised by how many share that vision. NQ needs to top trying to make DU work for everyone, they should start building a game they want to buiild and I am sure they will find many more who agree with them than they do now.

Certainly. During the start fo beta, concurrent logins peaked aroudn the 3800 mark which was hit in the first two weeks. After this, until NQ closed the API they left open allowing us to see these numbers, they allready dropped below 3K. Taking into account that there are roughly 30K backers and most of those has at least 1 beta ey to give away or use.. Well.. a picture emerges. Haven currently shows 927 teritories claimed, Sanctuary shows 43K andd a bit

The current district buildings are all but irrelevant by now. All they hold are the teleports to other disctricts and the shuttles to Haven and Sancuary. NQ should reporpose these to house a location where they integrate du-creators.org into the game. They have everything they need to be able tp do this avalaible in game allready. Much less overhead and far wider reach. You see something you like? You can teleport there from the exchange and bring a blueprint back as opposed to normal VR pods. As the locations are already in place and the district buildings effectively are where new players enter Alioth (usingt the shuttle), itis a great way to introduce them to this site and offer a ways to use it in an intuitive and simple way without having to leave the game.