blazemonger

@joaocordeiro I feel the OP title is perfectly within the rules of being fair and reasonable. and so is my position as I presented it in the post. I do not make statements of what NQ does or does not do unless it is substantiated by facts. I always make sure I make clear it is what I think/feel or what my opinion is on anything. If there is anything in my OP that you think this is not true for please feel free to send me a DM to keep this thread clean and I would be happy to correct it as I would not intent to do so.

I was typing the below response to THIS post and NQ was quick to lock that thread. I honestly feel though that this at best a premature action. NQ, I think that going all hardcore and lock out any voices that go against your style of managing the community is not a good sign and shows a lack of confidence in your actions, choices and abilities. At the same time I would agree and ask that we keep this open, fair and respectful from all sides. Having this discussion here should be preferable over forcing the discussion to move to public platforms outside of your direct visibility and control I'd say. Also, NQ seems to think that Discord is/could/should be their main comms channel.. Many have left Discord because there is little to no value in that channel for those that have left the game. The forums are really where the main communication should be and posts like referenced as seen on discord really need to be here on the forums. @le_souriceau I get your native language is not English which may be why your choice of words is a bit unfortunate, but knowing you well enough I feel your intent is clear and your perspective correct. It certainly can be said that NQ is at best inconsistent in how they handle exploits. Previously, they have let exploits which have massively benefitted a number of players slip by. Major ones being the schematic pricing one and the exploits immediately after the wipe during the first day of the servers being open to backers a week prior to beta start. NQ seems to have a tendency to every now and then come out swinging to show "how tough hey can be" while other times they will just go "oops.. well too bad it happened but we can't really do anything but close the loophole here". The wording of posts surrounding the former are always how these things take so much dev time (which frankly is nonsense) and how NQ is a small indie dev with only so much time. As I mentioned before, if NQ spent the time used to debate, prepare and action these things actuyally engaging the community, many of these issues and concerns would not exist. IMO it's not so much a witch hunt as it is a lack of confidence and these actions just continue to show the disarray NQ is in and the lack of leadership, ownership and mismanagement of resources and policy in the middle and top level in the company. NQ seems to think that restricting what we can discuss to existing game loops/mechanics will eliminate the community from talking about their ideas and opinions on the future. All it will accomplish is that this discussion moves outside of their direct visibility/influence/control and focus attention on what they are actually doing and achieving. And my hunch is that this is precisely what they do not want as it will reveal the severe lack of progress, a game that really has not seen much improvement at it's core since early alpha days, a UI which is virtually unchanged since those days and in general it will shows exactly what NQ would like to go away, their explicit drive to try and reinvent the wheel over and over again. NQ keeps using the excuses that they are but a small indie studio and that this is complex stuff.. Yes we know and this is why many of us have been more than forthcoming in volunteering good, some great, ideas and suggestions to make the game better. Fixing the junk problem at markets is not hard, it will not take much dev resources and would not need _any_ additional mechanics than what is already in game. The problem is that NQ is afraid they may step on someone's toes and so refuses to take ownership of their game in order to make it work. Creating a solution around players wanting to have their "shops" at or around markets would take minimal dev time and some management. It would also not require any new mechanics. The CM team trying to make a case against this simply hold no water, too many members of this community have a level of experience and understanding on this that it just comes across silly when they try. Fixing the wild growth of space towers is not hard, it would not take much dev time and no additional mechanics. Enabling salvage of abandoned constructs within safe zones again would not require much dev resources, would create gameplay and drive potential market activity. Fixing a lot of low hanging fruit issues in the UI/UX takes minimal effort and time while greatly impacting the game consistency. Many of these are well documented and reported as well. No amount of excuses about being "busy" or "a small studio" hold up here as none of this takes much time and even combined, the improved experience for players will create time that can be leveraged for more serious and complex issues.

Ehh.. If I fly my explorer ship into a glass panel in SE, the glass panel shatters and I move on.. If I fly my L core ship into a glass panel in DU my ship is toast and the glass panel does not even have a scratch.. If I take off and touch a microvoxel in SE, my ship will roll around the voxel, if I do the same in DU, my ship goes poof Not sure how that is "fair" .. DU collision mechanics are at best severely broken.

I will always address the CM as a team, not as an individual. So it is plural as I would not pin this on any one person who happens to be the messenger. This is a NQ problem, not a Naerais problem.

JC has certainly not given NQ the opportunity to build a solid base by a consistent overpromise or what was realistically possible to achieve for years. A big problem with NQ is also that they spend a lot of time debating and excusing not doing something. If they spent that time actually doing what the community asks they do, there would actually not be an issue to debate. And this is a consistent long running issue with them. CMs really can't use the "this is complex technology and we're just a small indie studio" excuse. Community managers should reasonably be expected to be hired and available to support he community. Currently they are spending more time coming up with excuses to not do that. The only CM who so far seemed to get that, left for better opportunities.

NQ has at least a year's worth of technical debt to get fixed. the game is riddled with small and bigger issues that must be getting in the way of progress. simple things like a lack of consistent behaviour in the UI start to manifest more and more. The back end has always been the game's Achilles heel and that just got magnified greatly by the rushed move to a public "beta" which was never supposed to happen. Adding more gameplay now would only create more problems, the game would be much better served by NQ taking time to stabilize, bugfix and resolve as much of the technical debt they can first.

Have you noticed how terraforming work here in comparison to DU? Have you considered what DU _could_ look like if Voxels were given properties like lift, drag, being un-obstructive to thrust, reactive to thrust (by glowing), being translucent, transparent or fluid? Different voxel types combined see their properties make then become engines, tanks, desks, chairs, etc.. I could see a lot of ways in which this tech could improve the experience and the uniqueness of DU

Already some good points and discussion here based off of a Discord message from a NQ employee. Guess what's missing in the discussion here (not surprising, but still)? Needless to say anything good said here will likely end up with all the other good and great ideas and suggestions over the last few years..

The problem is NQ will not have the guts to actually implement a proper power management system which will require though and choices in design and use. They will bolt on a system which pretty much just provides even better performance. Power management will be a buff, not the control mechanic it should be. For power management to really be a functional and deep mechanic it would need to be in at the core of every design (choice) and that is IMO not something NQ ever accounted for or wants.

NQ will eventually just update the requirements to mention that Shadow is not supported. They clearly have no idea how to fix this, even when they have received a lot of specific information about what is happening. With the new owner of Shadow and their plans, the platform is quite possibly going to get big and more mainstream. It could be a way for NQ to promote and drive awareness of DU .. But they just do not care to recognize opportunity when it stares them in the face..

Buffing engines will only make people carry more shit. The problem is that people want to carry amounts of mass into space which realistically should not be possible. Now NQ is clearly working towards gamifying DU to "make it more accessible". Engines were once more powerful, NQ thought severely nerfing them was a good plan. At the time we told them that the result would be the exact "engine walls" we now have. If NQ would buff the engines again, it would not result in players using less engines, it would result in players yanking more mass around with the same amount of engines UNLESS they make engines _way_ more expensive to build and buy. But then they would play right into the hands of the players who they have allowed to amass massive amounts of money and resources through several unhandled exploits. What may work would be cost for elements on constructs in general, preferable though a proper power management system to sustain engines and ideally combined with a capacitor system driving the engaging of engines.. What would be really nice to see is NQ redesigning the whole element system to integrate more with voxels. Create engines which are more neutral in shape and be easier to integrate INTO the hull, preferably with a voxel type that doe snot obstruct engine exhaust or even glow when it is hit by exhaust allowing for some cool designs. Engines could be shaped in a way that you can combine one or more engines and a tank to form one unit and build on that. Talking about tanks, what about rectangular shaped tanks? Elements have not changed _at all_ since we first saw them in pre alpha. Frankly a lot of elements look terribly dated and out of place.

There is no indication of a change in pace. In fact, we have yet to see/hear anything that confirms the company will be able top continue. All they have done is remove the end of 2021 release data from the roadmap and change it to "sometime halfway 2022" as a target, so they have not actually committed to anything. The recent triple blogpost was just a pacifier IMO and really did not tell us anything substantial at all. It was just another round of posts trying to take some pressure off but by now the user base has shrunk to a point where this just flies by and no one really cares or notices. A release in about a year from now is still hopelessly optimistic to be honest, seeing the current state of the game. I can't see a polished release ready product within the next two years and NQ just continuing their wet finger timeframes kind of tells me that as of now they really do not know what will happen and there is no real news about whether there will be a company by the end of the year.. But that is just my view on this and as always YMMV In a month, many players of the pewpew variety will depart for SB. That will pretty much leave the builders and designers and many of those are (alpha) backers so there is no revenue from those at all.

This is true, the core of the game has not really progressed much. Overall wo got mining.. and industry.. and some extra filling sure.. But the game has really not changed or progressed much from where it was in 2017. In fact many of the core issues we reported and discussed back then still exists today.

LOL @GraXXoR Reality has certain caught up with my post from 2017 SC - all ships available in game, new ships buyable in game after 6-9 months SE - runs 100+ player multi server clusters without much problem DU - Waiting for word on whether the company will actually survive and get new funding My investment in SC and DU is about on par, both low 4 digits .. not sorry about either. and not playing either right now. SE I paid €20 for and I just insta buy the DLCs when they come out.. And have been having a lot of fun playing SE again..

They should, it's horrific and completely misses the point. It also exactly does what the quote I took out of the article say. It shoves so much information down your throat you lose track of what it was that was said and after that you're on your own. The current EVE introduction is relatively short, it's laced with cheeky comments by Aura and it's actually voice acted which brings a "human touch" to it. DU just uses sometimes horribly formulated sentences, translated from French, and throws them out using Google's TTS engine. Aphelia is not funny, she has no soul and certainly does not bring a sense of "I'm here to support" to the new player.[ Now, NQ does not have the resources to deliver production value and quality at the level CCP does obviously but still.. It's cold, robotic and uninspired in execution. There is a good few fairly simple audio design tricks that would make the experience much better than it is but I do not think NQ has any actually sound designers or if they have does not utilize them.

Just VR to the location the key is at, put it in your inventory and exit VR.. POOF.. key is gone..

Because NQ specifically explains that they require a CPU with AVX instruction set for voxel operations.

Space Engineers has gone well past grinding to a halt with more than 4 players by now. I'm actually setting up a multi server game cluster for 100-200 players with a RP focus right now(yes there is PVP, but PVP needs to flow from RP, not be just pewpew for the sake of pewpew). Game world is divided into sectors, each runs on a separate server with seamless transition between them and a general backend sync. Another good example of this setup is Sigma Draconis which uses a similar setup but is ffa PVP.

The point is that (by their own admission) NQ is using 20 year old voxel technology and has to really jump through hoops to make it hold up. You can't take what NQ does as the benchmark when their engine is using what really is ancient if not archaic technology. The developer is not claiming this is a game engine(yet), that is not the point. It does show a modern, current application of voxel technology. Frankly, for what NQ seems to want to achieve from a game perspective, using freeform voxels is probably the worst choice you can make and while I'd commend NQ for being bold enough to try, it's becoming more obvious every day that the hurdles to overcome are high and many.

A love letter to Eve Online’s tutorial (thenextweb.com) Quote: "Far too often, the developers behind complex games (I won’t name and shame, but you know who you are) will try to front load the tutorial with everything a player needs to know. It’s like they’re angrily shoving information at me, as if to declare “I gave you everything you needed to know how to play. What more could you want from me?”" Obvioulsy, having a well established and qualified behavioural Psychiatrist on the payroll who is actively involved in the design of the EVE NPE is a thing.. CCP Ghost certainly knows his stuff.

Nah, the reason it's not being done is just because the game engine will not support it and it would be way to taxing performance wise. If they'd ever try it would end up being similar to the semi "simulated" system used for PVP (periscope). From very early on it's been clear that NQ is at an ever lasting struggle to get functionality without a performance cost as they are constantly at the ceiling of what he tech can deliver. There have only been reductions in functionality/capacity over the last three years, Some things make sense, I mean being able to watch YouTube on a screen in game was fun for a bit but obviously served very little purpose. We're now at the point where NQ is pretty much closing off any external access to screens and will go for an entirely internal solution through Lua. Players will still utilize these abilities to the max and I am pretty sure we'll see further restrictions as there is no room for that in available bandwidth.

Fetch was not really brought back to cater to ships stuck in the air or glitched, it was reactivated to allow the "solution" of hiding ships on markets as it is needed to get them un-hidden. Fetch is debug tool so it will be interesting to see how NQ eventually, maybe, possibly gets around to actually providing a solution for the lag issues around markets. So far their solutions, even when they claim they are based on data they have, did not resolve much, if not made things worse. It's still a mystery why NQ can't implement an impound system which has been pretty much spelled out in several forum threads by now. to be continued ...