blazemonger

Pretty much nail .. head there @CptLoRes

I think you missed the point there.. That's OK though..

Why should an MMO require consensual PVP to be a success? I think that is simply not the case. Lore and stories are created from the basic game concept. EVE lore and stories did not exist 20 years ago, only the basic concept of how New Eden evolved from the original wormhole to/from earth collapsing with many humans not able to get back. Much of the lore in EVE is created by players actually. DU only has the beginning of Lore in the arrival of the ARK ship and NQ already had to remove much of the original story to work around their server limitations.

That is not how this works. If this was true, Apple would have been dead by now. A vision really is just a perspective on an idea or an opportunity. A vision is not by definition fixed and can, no it should, adopt based on the experience gained while pursuing that vision. Unless you are able to fail often and fail fast, you are not going to get anywhere very quickly. The problem with DU lies deeper though, NQ locked out certain options early on and did not consider options/mechanics which are proven to be crucial to a successful MMO by implementing hooks allowing them to get back and add these as an integral part of the game once they got around to it. There was no foresight as most of what NQ has done, was done ad-hoc and as it came up. Coupled with a totally unrealistic expectation that players would come an-mass and do all the legwork to make the game interesting for everyone. And even while NEQ expected that to happen they never actually built in the tools to allow for that, instead they clearly ran into server restrictions early on and have been on a 4 year stretch of trying to bring the load down to a point performance may be acceptable. DU was supposed to go to Alpha well over 4 years ago, instead they went into pre alpha 4 years ago September and frankly are still in early alpha at best. Their brash talk about rapid development came to a grinding halt from the start as it became obvious they bit of way more than they could chew. Once they ran out of money they tried opening the doors last year and that pretty much made progress grind to a halt as they needed to stop haemorrhaging money to server cost. We can only guess about why JC was ousted but IMO it is not unreasonable to think he did not only paint a picture not true to the state of the development with us, but with investors as well. And so investors decided to take control and see if they could salvage their investment. The absence of any signals that was achieved or is even possible really only leads to one other possible outcome.

Hello games had millions in the bank and a small team of people willing to dig in and fix the game. NQ has no money and is mostly managers and non dev staff holding out for a pay check NQ will not be able to pull this one out of the fire unless they get funding, cut the fat and hunker down. Then, maybe, they can bring it back around.

Frankly I think @Sycopata pretty much hits the nail on the head in his OP.. NQ's failure to deliver is not because the developers they hired are not able to deliver. I do not mean this to come across as demeaning to devs work but they are there not to design a game or make a mechanic work. They are there to write code. They are the very professionals who could have made the game work and who could have made the game be way further ahead than where it is now. IF the managers directing them and giving them their work allocation has an actual plan and strategy to get to where they want to go. The problem with NQ is that at its core it was made up of JC and some of his "friends" with early employees being granted powers way beyond their competence while ferociously sticking to "the vision" and never even cared enough to actually take note or and listen to what the community had to say. Much of the problems the game has today were seen or predicted by many in the community as far back as the last few months of 2017 once pre-alpha opened. The biggest mistake NQ made was to not allow the facts of actual game design and development allow the vision to shift and change to accommodate what was achievable instead of what was envisioned. Up to the point where the vision of JC smashed into the wall called reality late last year, all we got was "you just do not understand". Well.. guess what, we do and did and the one who actually did not understand was finally ousted and has now left NQ. What will become of NQ now is unknown, while I had hope for a positive outcome early April, by now I do not think that NQ will have a chance to survive I'm afraid. The total absence of any sort of information from the top, not a single word from the new CEO nor any official press releases about the change in leadership leads me to believe that NQ was given a bridge capital to allow them to continue at a minimal sustainable level while a more permanent financial solution is sought out or a decision is made to turn off the lights. Everything NQ has done since beta has been focused on bringing cost down, first the "big database rewrite" and changes to industry to reduce the IOPS activity and with it the server cost which went through the roof as "beta" hit. Then schematics to further reduce the biggest drain on funding, again being the server cost, then the support BPO contract being terminated, removing live online support and finally the removal of JC himself late March. Since then, development has all but halted and so far the only thing on the table is the changes to screens which again, seems mostly driven by a need to reduce server interaction/cost and the announcement of mining being shifted to a numbers game, removing actual digging and actual ores being in the ground entirely. The mission system if delayed and I can't help but wonder if that too is because the load on the back end and the IOPS cost of that would be something NQ can't afford. Right now NQ has basically removed any and all commitment to releasing anything and the updates we've seen so far are pretty much indicative of maintenance mode. NQ seems to be waiting for funding or closing shop after a sale.

lol.. DU released August last year.. don't ask in what state but they released.. When you start taking people's money for subs, you release..

While obviously a done deal, I think it is not a good one. Using a cloud service like GeForce bring a number of restrictions which will show to be coming back to bite NQ.. Long stints in game are not an option.. Game sessions are limited to 1 hour for free accounts and 6 hours for premium.. So you better not plan on anything that will take more than 6 hours as you risk getting logged off and possible not being able to get back in if no servers are available. In a long battle or siege after a day of planning and setting up, some of your fleet may suddenly log of and not get back. The choice for GeForce Now baffles me, it makes no sense and also it pretty much erases the already rather weak excuses made around the game not starting on Shadow. It is not impossible that, in order to get on to GeForce Now, NQ had to block DU from running on other streaming platforms (not unheard of and there are documented cases with other games). So the whole sudden crashing on Shadow may well be intended and for purpose. At least it shows us the whole "not really meant to be run on a VM" excuse was just that and seeing this upcoming addition to Geforce Now really puts what NQ said on that in a rather shady light IMO. I already see the support answers around performance .. "Well I'd suggest you try the game on GeForce Now as that service runs on hardware well suited to play DU"

Actually no. In true MMO style games, PVE plays a vital role in several ways. For one it feeds into game mechanics that produce and create where PVP is the counter to that in that it removes and destroys. PVE is also a massive feeding ground for PVP in a direct sense and drives a _lot_ of it. Not expecting or considering PVE is actually the restrictive mindset which in fact creates limits and boundaries to what can be achieved. Without PVE, EVE online would be a massively boring game and it's economy would not be a thing at all. Seeing how DU takes many cues from EVE in it's top level mechanics but fails to implement or even consider the underlying ones, NQ pretty much shows this to be the case. Unfortunately, we have yet to see any signals NQ understand this and seems to be stuck in their utopian vision where they just provide the box and the sand while the player base will do the rest. That idea will only get a chance to work if the players get access to tools which allow them to build and script PVE content to start the loop as mentioned above. So far there are no tools in DU to accommodate any of this.

It certainly feels like the number of people actively working on the development of DU has come down quite a bit. The public list of employees is getting shorter and several entries seem out of date and the person in question no longer with NQ. Also the list is rather "management heavy". I have no reason to doubt the people we "see" do what they can and possibly some extra. It is the people we do not see and especially the ones I feel we should see, or have heard of by now, which I have my concerns about.

I'm not .. you missed the point entirely.

The "devblogs" were published little over a month ago.. My expectations PVP will not see it's rework until maybe.. possible.. end of this year, early 2022 PVE.. well.. we'll get scripted events called asteroids mining power/energy management is put on hold There is no actual information on anything right now.. it's all deliberately vague and non descriptive. I still suspect that there is no certainty about the future of the company and at best I can see a 3-4 month budget while the powers that be try and work out to either do an investment deal or turn off the lights.. I doubt we will hear anything structural about he future of DU until after we hear anything on the future of the company. Finally.. here's a good example of providing informative updates, focusing on what you _can do_ instead of putting the effort in excuses for what you are not doing .. ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous | Odyssey: Roadmap | Frontier Forums

well, so much for the excuse that DU does not run on a VM .. more likely it is now hardcoded to only run on GeForce Now It is not a priority to make it work on Shadow.. As the priority is to make it run (exclusively) on Geforce Now I am guessing..

As the 3rd party anti cheat framework NQ uses does not run on Linux, the client will not do so either. An in regards to a native Linux client, NQ has always said that that is not a priority, will not happen so some time for sure and may be a consideration at some point after release. So I guess that answers your question then and the threat can be closed now /s

No one is saying that game developers in general or NQ specifically here would not want to see Linux based players but the facts you keep trying to sweep under the rug and pretend to not see are that there is not enough potential customers to make it commercially viable to support them. This is not a Linux vs Windows debate, it is a numbers game and Linux userbase simply does not have the numbers to justify spending money and resources on in a commercial sense when talking game development. I am also not saying you should do anything, _YOU_ make a choice to run a Linux distribution which has a seriously low market share on desktop (for RH, probably in the neighbourhood of 0.5%) and with it _YOU_ place yourself in a position where you are not a viable target to support as the cost to do so would never be made back. That is just the economic reality. Stating NQ is too lazy to support Linux and in the same breath stating you do what you do a few post back just tells me you really do not have a good grasp of that reality. Then why is the creator of Linux making that exact argument when answering what needs to be achieved for Linux distros to become more mainstream? Are you saying you know something he does not? And are you saying that "binaries can be compiled" (?) or are you saying game developers should just give you the source code of their game so you can compile it yourself? You do know you are quoting numbers from a website (mmopolulation.com) which is easily shown to fabricate and inflate their numbers and be grossly inaccurate right? Last time WoW subscriber numbers were published was back in 2015 and the number was around 5.5 Million. EVE has about 350K active unique accounts as this is frequently shared by CCP in public. DU had about 50K active accounts last time these numbers were public, around this time last year .. Oh and according to your unreliable source, SC has 13.24M players, while CIG has their account number on the front page of the website and it shows 3.1M accounts No one here is arguing that DU is a massive popular game or that it is mainstream. In fact, any sensible person here will know and understand DU is a super niche game which has limited appeal. This is fine because even with that limited appeal, the game could still draw in more than enough of a player base to be a viable and profitable commercial endeavour. In order for that to become a reality though, NQ must shoot for the largest possible potential audience so they can attract enough players to generate enough revenue to stay alive and grow. This unfortunately (for you) does not include Linux users, as supporting Linux would come at a net loss and the potential userbase is not big enough to absorb that loss. Hence no Linux support.. Again.. it's just a numbers game. You seem to be missing the point here.. entirely. I did not back DU because I thought it would be a massively successful game with millions of players. I backed the game because of the potential and original vision for the game, knowing full well that over time that vision would need to be adjusted and based on that vision the game would never be a mainstream title and come close to the numbers they hoped or accounted for. If a game in the vein of DU would kickstart today, I'd probably back it again for the same reason. In general, you attribute others with doing something which effectively is instigated and driven by yourself. You pretty much are talking to a mirror with earplugs in and a blindfold on, not wanting to hear anything you do not agree with and blind to the facts.

@joaocordeiro LOL.. Are you _really_ implying that governments should intervene and basically enforce developers to support an OS that has next to no market share? You really have a knack for derailing a thread it seems. Facts here are very straightforward; The player base is not there to support a native Linux version of most games The creator of Linux has made several public statement where is says that Linux on Desktop will simply not ever be a thing due to the fragmentation and segmentation caused by different distros. the roughly 6000 games supporting Linux on Steam may sound like a big number, but when you realize that as of last month there were 50,361 games on Steam that becomes a not so large number. If you then check what percentage of those 6000 games are actually played on Linux as opposed to Windows .. well .. a pattern starts emerging. Linux is not and will never be a mainstream (gaming) OS for desktop, it just will not happen. And that is not taking away anything from the many excellent possible applications for Linux in the field where it shines (even when it is not the market leader there either). When Steam announced it's push on Linux support two years ago the entire 2% of the market share using Linux sang praise and glory.. today, that hype resulted in .. well.. nothing. Going back to the OP questions, it's just a matter of resources and money. The question comes up every now and then and the arguments are mostly the same every time. But the number simply are not there. I'm pretty sure ore people got impacted by and now can play because of the issues DU has on Shadow than there are potential players on Linux and NQ doe snot have the time or resources to prioritise fixing that issue. The new price is €30/month up from €15 .. If you can get a GPU suitable to play DU for 300AUD hen by all means.. go for it.. No one here is asking you to justify using Linux. You are free to do so but will need to accept that this will have consequences. in the case of DU it means that as the anti cheat framework NQ choose for DU doe snot support Linux and from their FAW will not do so, you are out of luck. Based on what you wrote earlier I must assume you are just trying to make a point here you know is not valid. In actuality, OS X is much closer to Unix than Linux is and ChomeOS is based on a Linux kernel (while not being Linux). But this is really a non argument that has no merit here and I expect you know as much. You can't make the case that by combining these three you create a viable player base that will require a singular approach to support all of these. NQ manages to barely stay alive right now just having to deal with Windows. Unless they change their chat engine framework, supporting another OS is simply not going to happen. LOL.. Linux accounts for 2.38 of desktop OS installs, and that is probably 70% Ubuntu/Debian, 20-ish % RH and then the rest.. That number has not budged at all after the Valve push.. It's also interesting how ppl keep bringing in Vulkan where that support for that framework has hardly seen any change, most games still are on DX11 today, if not DX9 Again, no one here is asking you to defend your choice of OS, you do that all by yourself. All I and presumably most other s here will tell you is.. you choose to go with an OS which is and will remain a footnote in desktop market share when you go by the years of statistics around this. And you are obviously able and allowed to make that choice but it's like you are bringing a footstool to go harvest apples while you should have brought a ladder. TL;DR: DU support for Linux will not happen because the numbers are not there to make it viable and invest resources towards it, the engine does not support a Linux native GFX framework and the chosen anti cheat framework does not support Linux You want to play DU, you will need to get a solution that includes Windows.. simple as that

While true, facts are that all this work really has not yielded much, if any result. For a game like DU, if NQ were to support Linux they would need to accommodate a number of distributions which are not interchangeable. I mean, Linus himself is very clear about the reasons why there is no broad support for desktop on Linux in general and for gaming specifically. I get why people may choose to go with Linux, I also feel many of the arguments are no longer valid or relevant today and bottom line is simply that there is not enough market share for Linux to be a viable platform to support for game developers in general as there no reasonable expectation of recovering the time and resources spent supporting these platforms. If NQ would change their mind and see how Shadow is a platform which would solve many potential problems and offer opportunity for them to grow their player base, it would actually be a perfect middle ground. at $37/month you get a full blown gaming PC running windows which is accessible on your Linux desktop, your phone, your tablet or whatever. Considering that your average GFX card suitable to run DU would come in around €600 by itself at least. even that above monthly cost is not unreasonable an offers some unique advantages. Honestly, saying that a €7/mo subscription is "fairly pricey and will quickly add up to an upgrade to my system" is, frankly speaking, nonsense. That is the most absurd argument I have heard in a good while and I do hope you actually know full well this is utter nonsense. Some of the major engines may "support Linux" to some extent but the mountain of problems and issue to overcome is massive and varies depending on what Linux distro you try to target. Again, for the relative handful of users this will accommodate, it's not something worth the time and resources for most game developers.

Well, Shadow just pretty much solved this problem for NQ for a lot of subscribers. They doubled their price for the basic config to €30/month so ppl are dropping off like flies..

In the future the laws pf physics still apply and will not have changed. Volume is not a factor here, mass is (and thrust). I's day NQ should balance engines not so much by increasing thrust but by decreasing mass and by introducing power management. A lighter engine with the same amount of thrust can support more mass for cargo, power management would control the amount of thrust you can apply at any given time.

Allowing ramming mechanics would be a can of worms I expect NQ wants to stay as far away from as possible and rightly so as it is a griefers wet dream.

As said, "Has to be fun" is subjective. What is fun for some is boring for others. In case it was not clear, the point I tried to make was yes, it needs to be fun but a the same time, it needs to be realistically achievable and by that it is implied that for the game to work, the eventual outcome will not be "fun" for some who currently have their expectations set for something that NQ will simply not be able to deliver on and so, NQ should not try and cater to what they have to know will not be possible in the end as that will result in no one having "fun" and the player base they try to please leaving anyway. That said, the 17th June will probably resolve that, at least in part, for NQ. It will make it easier for them to make what I believe will be the the right choice once SB releases.

An M core ship with heavy armour getting wrecked by a speck of dirt is not broken?

Yes, but "fun" is subjective Yes, but still subjective Why? DU is a game based around a low tick server tech, it has massive built in latency to be able to support the core functions of the game. In that context a fast paced PVP style simply will never work. I really feel that too many have expectations from the PVP implementation in DU that simply can not ever be met in a reliable way. NQ has really not been able to set the correct expectations and at the same time recognize that what they have been trying to make work regarding combat PVP for a long time now simply will not deliver the expected outcome. My expectations are that combat PVP will move much more towards strategic gameplay, almost turn based, than towards more action based. And I absolutely believe that this change can still be fun and exciting. Realistically speaking the whole periscope idea is just not effective, it presents challenges that are extremely hard, if not impossible to overcome. And realistically, combat in the context of a game like DU would mostly be conducted as a controller, not as a participant on/in the field and your information would be symbols and data on a screen, not a visual of the target. Would that approach turn away certain players? Yes, it would for sure but at the same time these players would eventually be disappointed anyway as what they expect is simply not going to be achievable so why waste time and resources on something that you know will not work in the end, just to appease those that will eventually leave anyway. This is a concept that appears to be missed by the NQ game designers and managers who decide what the developers are tasked to do. Moving to a more strategic approach would, especially when combined with other mechanics to achieve this, shift the potential player base more in the direction of RP style gameplay and that is market which is largely untapped but massive with often mature and financially secure players who are able and willing to sink time and money into their hobby. And the RP community at large is _very_ hungry for a proper SciFi style playground. I honestly believe that DU as a proper MMORPG has a far better chance of success than as an attempted FPS-MMO

If you look back a year, the only real advancement/progress we have seen was server meshing. It was a major one which really enabled the game to progress from there for sure, but that progress has yet to materialise

I see very few people whine about DU actually and the concerns about NQ I have and I read about seem to be mostly based in facts and conclusions drawn from existing and verifiable events And? NQ made promises and set expectations on how they would develop the game and how they would engage and work with their community. They have not kept those promises so far and frankly have a very questionable way of trying to deny their commitment even exists. And that game has a massive, well organized and very active CM team, they produce several weekly videos, they have live shows, their devs are both approachable and responsive And no, no one here is expecting that level of activity from NQ The way they are going, I expect they will, yes. If they will even continue to even just be .. Sure Please tell us.. in the past .. say .. 24 months, what actual core improvements have we seen in the game. I can tell you which one that was.. voxel meshing And that is fine and understandable if you are open and honest about these things like you promised you'd be when you started That is as much an assumption as you seem to accuse others of making so pot .. kettle No one is doing that though The have never shown any interest in engaging to begin with (and have actually confirmed they have no interest in doing that) so what's changed? Not the point, not the ask. Making mistakes is part of the process No one here is saying NQ should not make mistakes. In fact IMO they do not make enough mistakes and when they do , they linger on them for way to long trying to fix something that will not work to begin with Software development on a massive and innovative project like DU is all bout trial and error, about seeing what works or not. The trick is that you must be able and willing to fail (which I sometimes feel NQ is afraid of doing) and fail fast (meaning you notice you fail and you drop what you are trying to do and move to the next option to try again). Any and all successful innovations and paradigm shifting processes and developments come from failing often and fast.. until they do not. DU IS project that has the potential to change the way many play games. It is for that very reason that some of us are here as we recognize that. It is also why some of us are as vocal as we are since it seems NQ is not actually able to see that. It can be an amazing game one day yes. And also if it takes NQ four more years to make that game happen, I am actually very much OK with that. If the next NQ would start a kickstarter today for a concept similar to DU I'd probably back it again... even when I see NQ not getting to where they envisioned they would go. And I would do so because I actually understand what "fail often, fail fast" means.. Again, not he point of this entire debate but I do not blame you for not understanding that.