blazemonger

Overall, this balance overshoots in the opposite direction. It will be MUCH harder to reel it back in if it turns out to bee too much (which I expect) tha to further loosen these. Tax 50% off Why exactly? just because players say something that does not make it so. A single fixed rate is the issue here, not the amount.. A good solution woudl be to have a base rate of 500K and add a variable based on the productivity of the tile for the owner with a cap of say 3M quanta or so. The players with massive revenue from their tiles already got off for pocket change, not they just laugh it off. I really have not seen many really complain about the 1M/week rate and some that did, came to see it's actually not that bad. So i'm not sure where this came from. Charges to 25 base, upto 50 with talents Too much. I'd say 10/25 (10 base/1 per level on base talent, 2 per level on advanced talent) would be a more sensible number per day. Also, how about refunding talents on this as I am good with 25 charges.. Calibration grace 48 > 72 hours The change itself is good. Industry can run on offline tiles Bad idea and too much. If HQ tiles in offline mode can run industry that would be fine IMO. It presents a choice of using HQ for industry or adjecent mining tiles if you apply the same to MU. It also basically turns HQ tiles into exptensions of the Sanctuary tile which is not a bad idea IMO. This alone pretty much undoes the whole purpose of tax and further benefits the bigger players over the "small guy" Faster animations on minigame good, but why not just remove.. it's just a videoplayback so just skip it entirely Surface harvesting Could be good, wil need to see

I played around with the max displayed constructs and bumped it fairly high but not that hight.. It's really counter intitive to go to 10 times the default setting and NQ really should explain this better. But I'll crank it up and see wat happeens.. I did notice also quite a few instancees where textures do not render and you see weird yellow linees, for instances on moons .. this happens frequently as well I totally expect NQ not just removed functionality and features from the game, they effectively shrunk their server footprint to save cost too..

Most of what is mentioned here has no relevance to performance at all. It is about cutting cost, removing what they can to reduce the AWS bill. If it was a performance related concern then, the freed up resources should have been re-used to improve it which has not happned, in fact I distincly hav ethe impression overall performance has gond down since demeter as I believe NQ has removed server capacity which is (now) no lionger needed, again wi the objective to save cost. Draw distance for other constructs is worse, notably around busy markets but in general too. Pre Demeter I saw the neighbours towers when I logged in, now they are not seen unless I fly right up to them, as soon as I have covered about half of the 3 or so KM. Doors, forcefiels, landing geear and animatd elements in general do not spawn in unless you are within 30 meters, leeaving floating constructs all over the place, yet mining units are seen rotating from hundreds of meters. Why is that? NQ is not saying when asked.. How is NQ ever going to be able to implement things like TW on planets and even CvC, let alone AvA with this server limitations? What will happen if and when NQ gets to a release of some form and they will see the hopefully tens of thousands of new players they will need to stay alive? They have litterlly cut of their arms and legs to stay alive and these do not just insta grow back when they need to get up and start running.

An ellipse is just a circle with a different radius for X and Y axis, so why not addRound(layer,X,Y,X-axis-radius[,Y-axis-radius]) one unction for either, omit the last variable for a circle

No timeframe for the patch yet, but so far NQ is right on cue in their usual cycle towards a major patch so from that I'd expect it 22-24 February. Becasue NQ being NQ I can see them trying to spin this as a "you lost it but you did not really lose anything". I think it is a very valid quation to ask.

I'm not sure about any of this. The space wrecks seem more of a hazard than an asset for the game, especially in space. Unless these show up on radar regardless of what filters you have set, with the terrible spawnranges the game has, the risk of running into one and wrecking your own ship in the process is real IMO. The whole IAR idea, once more, seems massively over engineerd with timers that really make no sense. It really feels like a mechanic to try and convince someone to not let their subscription expire or lose their stuff first and create "gameplay" second. Then, imagine I have a construct I bought the BP for at 25M .. Now transfer the construct to an alt, let him unsub and l capture the construct as it gets unclaimed. My alt now resubs and I have a free blueprint which basically steals 25M from the original seller of the BP. And yes, this wil be exploited to no end I am certain. Also, I sure hope the blueprints that are put in the unsubbed player's inventory is a regular one, not a magic one as otherwise this is an even better mechanic to exploit and dup entire constructs using Alts. IMO markets should simply have an impound system.. You leave your construct there for 24 hours and it goes to impount at the ARK ship, where you can recover it for an increaisng fee. After it has been in impound for 4 weeks it gets deleted.

I have several times suggested that NQ expand on the skittle Surface Harvesting. Remove the "everywhere" and create "random" pockets which sill respawn in different areas Add items like gems in the mix, to be found in thse pockets as well and use these to buff/specialize elemnts like engines or use then to create research/invention mechanics, allowing players to buy only tier1 schematics and then use tools and talents to improve them or trun them in higher tier ones.. Yes, much like EVE but it works perfectly well there so why not copy something els ethat works from EVE

Except it is not a playerID, it is a characterID and those are two very different things If the ID can be used to identify a real person then yes. If the ID only identifies the in-game character then no. As far as I know the ID you see in game has no accessible link to a player account. Yes, NQ will be able to make that connection outsid of the game, but as soon as the login servers pass you on to the game servers, your player identity goes away and all that is there is the character which is not protected under GDPR as the character itself does not allow you to link it back to the account and the player behind it. I'm pretty sure that was actually the reason that they changed the login from the charactername to the email address at some point. Defiinition: And also SOURCE By this definition the characterID in a game is not protected under GDPR as it does not relate to a natural person, it relates to a fictional character and you are not able to connect the ID with a natural person. But we're getting off topic here

That is not what I am saying here and, as I mentioned, I understand the reasoning behind the change, even when I expect it will not be very effective in addressing the reason for it Besides NQ not having any way to know or detect whether such a solution is used, it is really not relvant whether it is against EULA actually in that regard. Mind you, while I know this can be done and how, I have no interest in this at all, I am pretty sure though that the audience these changes are aimed at do as well and will use it the moment this is pushed through so the change effectively is nullified instantly. While that is a fair argument, IMO that should, on the occasion it is seen and reported, be dealt with outside of the game, As in, you spam people's logs, you are warned, then banned. What you describe is actually a violation of EULA and as such perfectly actionable. Yes, I get that, however what you are effectively doing is actually discouraging emergent gameplay in removing things that enrich the game for many because it may offer opportunity to exploit or otherwise harass for some. As I mentioned, baby and bathwater. And I certainly appreciate this consideration To be honest here though, the solution really is not this, the solution woudl be an API exposed to players and available to use and build your own toolset or offer public services to the community as a whole. As NQ, you control what is exposed AND get data about who used what and when. Data which you can then correlate against actions by the same player(s) in game to track and manage potential abuse. We know the game has an API framework in place, we had access during the start of Beta before NQ closed it. It would be great to see NQ build on that and offer it as a means for us to enrich the game as a whole with a relative small investment from the side of NQ.

I understand the reasoning behind the logging changes NQ is making, but it is not going to stop the players they are looking to target with this and overshoot the intended purpose for that reason. This will be another "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" situation IMO. The removal of logging only really hurts the players who use it in a productive and functional way, effectively creating the "emergent gameplay" NQ like to refer to. It is trivial to write an overlay that is completely invisible to the game (or EQU8) to then write information to a screen and/or the HUD and OCR it off of there to use it outside the game, A bit more work than getting it from the logs but not by much once the tool is written (which is really, really easy) Also, on the volume comments, I am not sure how that could be difficult to the point where it required "deep changes" as it is as simple as a DirectX object which I'd expect would be exposed to the Lua subsystem anyway for a number of other reasons.

While I agree with the point made by itself, it is not relevant in the context of the incident this weekend and how it was handled. What happened here (and I know the cause but will not disclose by request of NQ) would be an issue regardless of whether this is more integrated into the game, as a recurring gameloop instead of a weekly event with a set (re)start point, or not.

TL;DR Staff on call/duty did well, process management seems to be lacking Short overview of events: This weekend we saw an issue where Asteroids did not spawn for the better part of 24 hours after they should have. About 2 hours after the expected respawn most old asteroids de-spawned and less than a handful new ones appeared. While tickets were logged, by I presume several players, no communication or observable action from NQ happened for almost 24 hours. On Sunday I received a response from support which was very informative and helpful, from it, it seemed that a (known) issue was causing new asteroids to not respawn as the previous ones could not de-spawn. When asked, support clarified no communication on this had happened as that was for the CM to handle who were not available outside of office hours to do so. Then more information arrived, indicating at least one server dev was looking into the issue and a bit later a response on the forums in a thread on the matter from a dev indicated the issue was manually resolved, a fix would be pushed in a coming patch and asteroids were back in play. This was confirmed and players could go about their business in game. Takeaways from this incident: Support staff and the relevant dev (team) did what they could, and the issue was resolved. What was missed and would be an opportunity for improvement for NQ here would be: 1 - Communication: If support staff if not allowed or able to make a public statement on an issue like this while no CM staff is available, this should be reviewed. While it is fair to say that such communication would need to be generic as there is much unknown and possibly not within support staff abilities to either know or confirm at the time, If a general notice of the issue being known and worked on this would have prevented the community and active players from not having any understanding of what was happening while they were (severely) impacted by the incident. Especially due to the limited timeframe of this loop, many set aside time to participate and make sure they are ready for it. By not communicating, NQ is principally ignoring their responsibilities towards their player base in this regard. 2 - Timely action taken: For a crucial game loop like this, a live ops game should not have 24 hours without any perceived action, whether (financial) resources limit NQ’s abilities or not. This could be considered a major incident and should see a response time of far less than 24 hours, more like 4 hours at most, especially since we could see that, once a dev got involved, this was resolved fairly quickly and so it is a valid question to ask why this could not have been done the day prior. In closing, I would thank the support staff and dev(s) involved. There is really not much, if anything that can be put on them here it seems, this is a process management issue that is for team leads/management to adjust and resolve. I’d be more than willing to support/assist if needed, as this is part of my expertise and I invite NQ to contact me in DM if so desired to discuss. FYI; @NQ-Abu @NQ-Sesch @NQ-Nyzaltar

Appreciate the update @NQ-BearClaw

I got a response form NQ on the ticket I logged for the asteroids not spawning, and while I can't share exactly what I was told, which I can understand under the circumstances, the bottom line is that there is a viable reason for the asteroids not spawning which is being worked on by NQ internally. Let's hope that NQ comes out and gives us an official update on this early this week..

Before anything gets implemented in the next big patch I'd say at leeast NQ will need to ensure all elements, when placed blue, do not cause any of these warnings as plenty of elements do. And when you check there is no contact between the elements, yet they collide according to the build helper. The mesh and/or hitbox for many element is really off. But I fully expect NQ will just push this through and play dumb regarding this in the hopes that everyone just quietly goees away and fixes what is not broken on their constructs. ANd if post update they can't get away from it we will just get another "we heard you and will do better, we promise" post as they conclude their communication cycle on the patch and start working towards the next.. As has been the case pretty much every single patch so far. But then, NQ might break that cycle and actually address and then fix this as well as the Asteroids debacle this weekend.. Yes.. addressing it and fixing it are two separate processes.. something NQ seems to not be aware of.

I was planning to spend some time running asteroids.. but it looks like someone at NQ forgot how to start the asteroid event.. a shame.. and odd how this seems to not be an automated process integrated into the game. cron must be a tool unknown to NQ Well, NQ now has two opportunities to show they meant their "we will do better" this time around.. It will be interesting to see how they respond to this (tomorrow)..

I expect they have no way to tell if elements are actually stacked or just slightly glitching. So they just "kill it all".. As has been mentioned before.. typical case of throwing out he baby with the bathwater.. It would have been great to see some sort of response from NQ this week but I guess the words in the announcmment from Monday are just that after all. It's very difficult to do better at something you really do not understand all that well to begin with (or you do and you really never had the intent to follow through). You're not wrong, especially when a good portion of the team that started this left well before pre alpha actualy got underway and most of them actually left to go work for the same company at or shortly after Kickstarter ended.

Maybe so and I get your reasoning here. The problem for me is more that this is presented as a solution to a problem which is does not actually "solve", That problem was corrected a while ago and this seems to be an extention of that and tries to prevent existing constructs with the relevant exploit to no longer function. The symptoms you describe may be "resolved" by this change but the change does not actually correct the root cause for the issue, it just "masks" it by preventing the symptom from occurring. And that in itself is very much a standard practice with NQ which is building up a massive level of technical debt that will come and bite them sometiome in the future I am certain.

The problem was people exploiting an oversight in the build mode allowing you to place several of the same elements in the exact same place, and all of them would function at full capacity. You could stack 10 L containers in the space needed for 1 and it would work fine. THAT was the issue, and it was fixed. Now NQ is overshooting massively by basically killing any and all overlap or glitch, often due to badly designed hitboxes or minor graphical glitches. That is not a problem, it allows, in some cases, for more compact building which only benefits the aesthetic and has no functional impact on the design. There is no need _at all_ for that to be addressed as the exploit has been fixed and ALL NQ needs to do is prevent operation of several elements of the same type which are in the same (or close to the same) space, The latter would take a bit more work and more cleaver detection and reporting maybe, but what we have now is literally a carpet bombing of an otherwise innocent occurrence to kill an isolated situation where it is not (so innocent). In their commitment to renewed and improved communication, it will be interesting to see how NQ will act on the feedback from this.. So far it has been pretty much silent as mostly has been their MO in these matters. Obviously, no full solutions or clarification can be provided so quickly, that would be unrealistic to expect. But at least acknowledgement and an outline of what to expect going forward would be well applicable here by tomorrow IMO.

Careful now, you are giving away information you may not want to

There now.. that's better; You must not play many Sandbox MMO games.. as this is pretty much standard. You pay a sub for access to the game, it does not entitle you to anything in game, except for maybe the ability to train talents. If you do not want to pay for territory you do not have to, you can mine enough to pay for the parts you need to buil din space and/or build a spacefaring miner to get your ore from asteroids. This is perfectly doable solo. So your presumtion is pretty much false on all counts.

So, I tool the voxels off of one of my favorite ships to check where the "stacking" issue was and turns out nowhere is anything stacked. Some elements just slightly clip into others due to inaccurate hitboxes and/or allowances NQ left in. some elements are blue when repositioning and stay blue when put back to snap in place just fine but are reported as "clipping/stacked". The ship in no way would qualify for any of the reasons why al this is being implemented and pretty much is proof that NQ ia grossly overhsooting in their efforts and dare I say is wasting everyone's time (includingtheir own) with trivial situations. @NQ-Deckard you are wlecome to come have a look

@Tiberis Seems you missed the part about HQ tiles where even if no taxes are paid you will not lose ownership. Also, and quite some time ago, NQ made it pretty clear that only your Sanctuary tile willl ever be truly "safe"..

Certainly, if they were to come out today and say, "we realize there is work we need to do on hitboxes to make this work correctly", that would be a good first step. From there they can assess if they will be able to get all that done in time for Panacea and if not, they should remove this from that patch. Right now, they are sending a lot of players into a tailspin, trying to fix something that many not need fixing and/or should be for NQ to address. That time and effort should be considered and so a quick response is warranted, the action to that response can then take a bit more time. You know.. your average proper communication and project management.

I would not be in favor of NQ turning dispensers into market terminals. They are expected/supposed to deliver player run markets, not shoehorn dispensers into something they really should not be