Bobbylord

Now imagine that all this could come naturally via emergent gameplay instead of orchestrated via the devs.... like, e.g. 
 

That's what I'm here for!  I'm really glad my response found you well.

I'm still reading! As I said in the reply above, the re-evaluation has happened... but I can't say anything more at this time.  

Also, to the point you made that I highlighted green: totally agree! Even if you're not interested in looting player wrecks, that fear of potentially losing it all totally lends a greater sense of urgency/adrenaline to gameplay. That kind of excitement is priceless!

Hi Johnny!

At this stage, I'm not comfortable making concrete promises about changes. What I will say, happily, is that the team has heard (and agreed with) all of you.  (Does that imply enough?)

 

So what's the update on this and the time table for this to return.  In a "player run" universe it makes no sense that someone can smash into a planet going 3000 speed, while wrecking every element on their ship, and expect 100% certainly that they can get back to it to repair it.  Sure If it's in a remote area and they make it there cool, but if someone else finds a wrecked ship we should be able to salvage it. 

I'll certainly give you that re: the timeline! I'm still a bit foggy on the specifics there, but I trust what you say. You're the eyes and ears on the ground, after all!  

Regarding the wrecks event, I can totally see how that would only serve to increase your frustration. I can say for certain that our intention there was to provide players with something to do after reading a lot of feedback that the game had become boring. It was meant to be something we rolled out to parallel player-driven activities, not replace 'em.
 
 
This is a great write-up!! I don't see why shifting back to something like this can't happen.  

I'm sure you feel this keenly, but it's worth repeating - I really appreciate that you're willing to engage with me like this. I care a lot about how you're all doing in-game, and interactions like this really help me help all of you.

Just to re-iterate:
I've never salvaged a single player wreck to date, and I absolutely despise the kid glove style of change. If I screw up and crash, as a player, I want that sense of urgency and uncertainty of whether my ship is going to be there. As a player, I want that type of game interaction. I want "vultures" to exist and try to sell me my ship back if they claim it, or alternatively attempt to outmaneuver them while running back to my wreck. Negative player interaction drives positive player interaction, thus all player interaction as a result - which can only benefit the playerbase and the game. We are not here to play a single player game, we are not asking for pve mechanics to be removed - we NEED sanctuary type planets for players to learn - I can understand and respect that BUT we also still need the overall game physics and mechanics to exist there too, or heck, even a planet like Alioth which is currently in the blue sector but outside of sanctuary - as a compromise.

If NQ representatives are still reading this tread, I urge you to re-evaluate the crash nerf decision - which is the way I see it more so than salvaging nerf (since I've never done the later, but have the former). What the OP said with regards to this removing more emergent gameplay is 110% spot on. And not just for the scavengers. 

On a flip side - NQ is opening the can of worms now to having to write a new set of arbitrary rules into the registar, as a penalty for people "griefing" by crashing dozens of XS cores into markets or player bases, since the built-in game mechanic that would have prevented this has been removed.

Hey NQ-Naunet,
 
thanks a lot for taking the time to listen to us and investing it to explore viable options for the scavenging profession going forward. This is really very much appreciated no matter the outcome.
 
That sounds about right. The only thing we could argue over is the timeline of the change ("Once Beta hit, this mechanic was changed so that only ships taken down in PvP could be claimed the way that's described above. This fundamentally shifted the way players like you were able to enjoy DU.") - as we observed/noticed/witnessed it this change happened, or only came into effect, about 2-3 weeks ago. Other than that your summary looks solid to me.
I also fully understand the reasoning behind it, even though I do not agree with actually implementing the change (or at least on how it was done - silently and to an extend removing scavenging from the game). It somewhat sends a wrong signal removing any risks from the game as there is no "risk vs reward" anymore - only reward (consensual PvP combat in the 100% avoidable PvP enabled piece of space is not really a risk but a choice). Which, obviously, has a big impact on the player behavior (recklessness and ignorance towards flying mechanics/physics, learning that choices in game do not really have consequences), how the game is observed and viewed by the community/new players (PvE gameplay only) and the in-game economy (if you never lose anything there is no need for continuous production; demand dies down and the only reason left to play in the current beta, mining and production, is gone).
And hopefully just as a coincidence, but at around the same time this, and excuse my wording, carebear change has been introduced, NQ starts spawning artificial wrecks with artificial salvaging mechanics (limitations in amount salvageable) - which makes it look even more like the strategic direction is away from any emergent, sandbox and PvP centric content (scavenging essentially is PvP gameplay) towards artificial, PvE based theme park organized content. This felt like: Hey, we take your profession away, we remove the last bit of emergent gameplay left in the game currently and give you artificial wrecks with artificial salvaging mechanics. But, hey, you won't be able to see them on the radar so you got to check every hex "by hand" - have fun!
 
 
Not sure I'd call it my version, this is more of a result from talking to various (former) scavengers and taking into account how it used to work before the change. Nevertheless, yes, I think introducing a version of the mechanic which would look like the following could do the trick:
 
When a player crashes their ship in a way so that the core gets destroyed (essentially any core that gets destroyed in any way), said ship (construct) should be salvageable by any other player anywhere in the universe (all planets, moons and in space). With the _exceptions_ being:  - On Sanctuary (and sanctuary like moons added in the future) - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you  - Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews - obviously also on "safe planets/zones" in solar systems/galaxies/universes added in the future) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - nowhere but on tiles owned by someone else (another player or an org you are not a member of) and which are not owned by NQ/Aphelia (markets and such) Requiring players to "abandon" a destroyed construct/core manually is not emergent gameplay and should not be required for constructs with destroyed cores in order to make them salvagable.  
Thanks again for your time and support!
Bobbylord
 

Done: 
 

Done: 
 

As pointed out by NQ-Naunet in 
I'm posting this suggestion/idea here in the Idea Box section:
 
When a player crashes their ship in a way so that the core gets destroyed (essentially any core that gets destroyed in any way), said ship (construct) should be salvageable by any other player anywhere in the universe (all planets, moons and in space). With the _exceptions_ being:  - On Sanctuary (and sanctuary like moons added in the future) - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you  - Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews - obviously also on "safe planets/zones" in solar systems/galaxies/universes added in the future) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - nowhere but on tiles owned by someone else (another player or an org you are not a member of) and which are not owned by NQ/Aphelia (markets and such) Requiring players to "abandon" a destroyed construct/core manually is not emergent gameplay and should not be required for constructs with destroyed cores in order to make them salvagable.  
Bobbylord on behalf of the hopeful Scavengers Community

To start, I think this is the easiest thing to tackle & clarify - based on player feedback, I'm in the process of revitalizing the Idea Box here in the forums. I encourage you to place any ideas you suspect were removed from Feature Upvote here instead. (You may have already done this! If you have, send me the link to your post and I'll stick it in my notes ASAP.) ?

Now that I'm dedicated to checking on the forums daily, you'll absolutely be seen/I will pass the ideas along! (Plus, selfishly... I like being able to organize ideas here where they 'live forever' if that makes sense. Feature Upvote doesn't give me that kind of organization/storage capability.)

If I had to guess, I would say that your submissions were removed because changes to scavenging were recently made, therefore bumping it down in terms of priority. That doesn't mean it will never be revisited, and it certainly doesn't mean you're being rejected. (Another reason why I'd like these ideas to live here permanently. I can re-surface them as many times as I need to once I sense that a topic is re-emerging priority-wise!)

So as a final recap to this point, my gut says that we should:

1) use Feature Upvote first, but if you notice your submission isn't posted within 48 hrs,
2) utilize the Idea Box here so that nothing important is lost. (Being mindful that I can't make any guarantees, but this will help me 'go to bat' for all of your ideas long-term.)

Hey NQ-Naunet,
 
first of all, sorry for addressing you the wrong way. I'll do my best to remember
 
A very big yes to 1), not sure about 2) and absolutely on 3). I figure most, if not all of the participants in this thread understand the difference between the artificial salvaging event with wrecks spawned out of thin air and actual player constructs which have been crashed and/or abandoned. 
 
Regarding 1) - there is (was) a community of players making a living of Scavenging (salvaging wrecks of player constructs) until a few weeks ago (me included). There were almost infinite amounts of crashed and salvageable player constructs all over the place. That feeling when you make radar contact to a crashed player construct with destroyed core, get closer, identify it and see that there is actually more than just a core... priceless. A couple examples:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/jjmokh/to_the_pilot_who_crashed_locobus_with_gold_in/
- Streamer who used to focus on scavenging: https://www.twitch.tv/sku11face_ (he used to stream multiple hours daily from his scavenger hunts and has hangars full of salvaged elements from player constructs)
 
Sadly though, about a couple weeks ago we noticed that almost all crashed ships we stumbled over were no longer "abandoned"/salvageable. That's also when the discussions and rumors about a "stealth" change started to spawn on reddit, DU discord and on streams of players who used to go scavenging regularly. I also noticed it myself - my usual "hunting" grounds dried up and most of what can be found and salvaged now are essentially empty cores or cores with bugged fuel tanks attached. Not even worth looking for anymore considering fuel and time invest.
 
There is obviously the alternate option that out of the sudden, within just like 12 hours about two weeks ago, all the players who crashed their ships did no longer click "Abandon Construct" (and we have to assume they all did that before). But that seems rather unlikely.
 
 
Regarding 3) - Yes, this is a sad story. Upvote is currently, besides trying to get NQs attention on Discord and the forums (both of which do not seem to work/be the right place to get the attention of NQ and start a proper interaction - so far), the only and obv right place to try and get heard by NQ as a minority group of/in the community. Hence why I chose to suggest this game design suggestion (as outlined in the first post inn this thread) on upvote - twice. And twice, as you know, it was deleted without any feedback even though there are no "duplicates" going into this direction at all. Not even getting the chance to make the communities interest in the scavenging "profession" transparent by giving us the chance to vote for it in the system designed and meant for exactly that is, well, saddening. Saddening to a point where I start to wonder if it was the right decision to fund NQ and DU via Kickstarter in 2016 (imagine spending hundreds of Euros to support a company and a vision you believe in just so that they can ignore you and the community you identify with once they have your money).
 
 
Let's get the discussion started
Bobbylord
 
 

Hey everybody!
 
This post is about the sad state of the "Scavenging" "Profession" in DU currently - resulting from the gimped status of salvaging gameplay. Even though not documented, salvaging gameplay changed drastically in the last few days/couple weeks. While we, the players exploring and salvaging crashed ships and left alone static cores, were able to make somewhat of a living from exploring and salvaging until about a couple weeks ago, now, with the undocumented and unannounced changes to salvaging gameplay, we are no longer able to sustain this lifestyle.
 
Previously, when a gold digger on Lacobus overloaded their ship and crashed back down on the planet trying to make their way out of the atmosphere, we were able to benefit from that. We were able to find, locate and salvage the ship as well as reap in the rewards. Now though, there is neither a risk for ignorant players overloading their ships or carelessly flying and crashing into everything anymore. We cannot claim cores anymore that were destroyed (only in the sad, completely avoidable, tiny bit of pvp space we have left) - only cores that were abandoned by the owner by intention.
 
Here's the story unfolding pieced together from the DU Discord (just search for salvaging and get an impression of the confusion and frustration due to these unannounced and undocumented changes) :
 








 
Scavenging used to be a viable way of living. And a nice way to combine flying, exploring and making some money to pay for the fuel and upkeep. We are now forced into digging in mines underground instead of flying about and exploring this world you created for us to explore and conquer.
 
I'd like to end this post with a proposal and at the same time ask for feedback from the fellow DU player base:
Constructs which core get destroyed should be salvageable by anybody in general (on planets/moons and in space) - with the only exceptions being: On Sanctuary - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - but only on market tiles or your own/your org tiles - your destroyed construct should be salvageable by anybody on tiles of others (not yours or your orgs) and unclaimed tiles  
There should be no need for the owner to abandon a destroyed core/construct in order to make it salvageable by others taking above proposal into account. This mechanic takes scavenging/salvaging out of the game as a "profession". It takes the primarily reason to play the game away from me and a whole lot of others.
 
"Please fix" - as they say....
 
Best regards - former scavenger,
Bobbylord
 
 
 

Well, NQ-Naunet said he was looking into it and replies here in this thread on the board. That was yesterday. Let's see if/when he finds the time to reply.
 

I've posted an upvote suggestion regarding the Scavenging/Salvaging suggestion in this thread. This is the second time I post this (I posted it on Friday, 6th of November the first time) on upvote - the first post was deleted without comment (even though I left a proper Email address I received no feedback or reasoning at all).
 
Let's see if it will be approved this time and if NQ allows us to at least vote for our future in DU.
 

Exactly.
 
While its 'nice' to have some game provided massive shipwrecks that are half buried in the ground and all for better atmosphere ... but so few, and like ores, finite... they will all vanish in short order, and that 'feature' will be null and void again.

Yeah,  it sounds ridiculous to spawn shipwrecks if there are real player shipwrecks lying around. It goes against their catchphrase. "A persistent single-server universe, Entirely built and driven by players"

Hey everybody!
 
This post is about the sad state of the "Scavenging" "Profession" in DU currently - resulting from the gimped status of salvaging gameplay. Even though not documented, salvaging gameplay changed drastically in the last few days/couple weeks. While we, the players exploring and salvaging crashed ships and left alone static cores, were able to make somewhat of a living from exploring and salvaging until about a couple weeks ago, now, with the undocumented and unannounced changes to salvaging gameplay, we are no longer able to sustain this lifestyle.
 
Previously, when a gold digger on Lacobus overloaded their ship and crashed back down on the planet trying to make their way out of the atmosphere, we were able to benefit from that. We were able to find, locate and salvage the ship as well as reap in the rewards. Now though, there is neither a risk for ignorant players overloading their ships or carelessly flying and crashing into everything anymore. We cannot claim cores anymore that were destroyed (only in the sad, completely avoidable, tiny bit of pvp space we have left) - only cores that were abandoned by the owner by intention.
 
Here's the story unfolding pieced together from the DU Discord (just search for salvaging and get an impression of the confusion and frustration due to these unannounced and undocumented changes) :
 








 
Scavenging used to be a viable way of living. And a nice way to combine flying, exploring and making some money to pay for the fuel and upkeep. We are now forced into digging in mines underground instead of flying about and exploring this world you created for us to explore and conquer.
 
I'd like to end this post with a proposal and at the same time ask for feedback from the fellow DU player base:
Constructs which core get destroyed should be salvageable by anybody in general (on planets/moons and in space) - with the only exceptions being: On Sanctuary - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - but only on market tiles or your own/your org tiles - your destroyed construct should be salvageable by anybody on tiles of others (not yours or your orgs) and unclaimed tiles  
There should be no need for the owner to abandon a destroyed core/construct in order to make it salvageable by others taking above proposal into account. This mechanic takes scavenging/salvaging out of the game as a "profession". It takes the primarily reason to play the game away from me and a whole lot of others.
 
"Please fix" - as they say....
 
Best regards - former scavenger,
Bobbylord
 
 
 

Completely agree. Safe zone or no - it should be up to players to design their ships around their flying capabilities or accept the risk vs. reward if they overload their ship. If your game crashes, your ship stops anyway. To date I have yet to salvage a single ship, so I am by far biased in this assessment as this was never a source of income for me - but removing such features and basic elements of risk is a major step backwards in the game.

As for "griefers building invisible walls" - you guys do realise that radars exist and you can set them to show you static cores right? Removing features and limiting gameplay should never be an option or a consideration in my humble opinion. As long as players have reasonable means to circumvent it - which in this case there is - NQ needs to let us players figure out how to interact with each other and stop trying to micro-manage and social engineer the community. I would far rather deal with griefers in the game than the developers neutering the gameplay or setting arbitrary rules around how the griefers grief me. 

This game has too many care bear builder types to have any hardcore aspect, I only imagine the amount of crying NQ had to tolerate from idiots who crashed and thought they should be safe from their own stupidity even on Sanctuary... sometimes I have the urge to start a game dev company and just say "fuck you guys, I am building a hardcore game that I would like to play" and just do it, NQ is just not cut out for it.

I wish we had a way to up vote this thread. I just started playing a few weeks ago and would have love to experience salvaging in its original state OP stated.

Hey everybody!
 
This post is about the sad state of the "Scavenging" "Profession" in DU currently - resulting from the gimped status of salvaging gameplay. Even though not documented, salvaging gameplay changed drastically in the last few days/couple weeks. While we, the players exploring and salvaging crashed ships and left alone static cores, were able to make somewhat of a living from exploring and salvaging until about a couple weeks ago, now, with the undocumented and unannounced changes to salvaging gameplay, we are no longer able to sustain this lifestyle.
 
Previously, when a gold digger on Lacobus overloaded their ship and crashed back down on the planet trying to make their way out of the atmosphere, we were able to benefit from that. We were able to find, locate and salvage the ship as well as reap in the rewards. Now though, there is neither a risk for ignorant players overloading their ships or carelessly flying and crashing into everything anymore. We cannot claim cores anymore that were destroyed (only in the sad, completely avoidable, tiny bit of pvp space we have left) - only cores that were abandoned by the owner by intention.
 
Here's the story unfolding pieced together from the DU Discord (just search for salvaging and get an impression of the confusion and frustration due to these unannounced and undocumented changes) :
 








 
Scavenging used to be a viable way of living. And a nice way to combine flying, exploring and making some money to pay for the fuel and upkeep. We are now forced into digging in mines underground instead of flying about and exploring this world you created for us to explore and conquer.
 
I'd like to end this post with a proposal and at the same time ask for feedback from the fellow DU player base:
Constructs which core get destroyed should be salvageable by anybody in general (on planets/moons and in space) - with the only exceptions being: On Sanctuary - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - but only on market tiles or your own/your org tiles - your destroyed construct should be salvageable by anybody on tiles of others (not yours or your orgs) and unclaimed tiles  
There should be no need for the owner to abandon a destroyed core/construct in order to make it salvageable by others taking above proposal into account. This mechanic takes scavenging/salvaging out of the game as a "profession". It takes the primarily reason to play the game away from me and a whole lot of others.
 
"Please fix" - as they say....
 
Best regards - former scavenger,
Bobbylord
 
 
 

I'm guessing it's because people were building terrain walls and players wouldn't load them in fast enough before crashing into them. So I don't disagree with NQ for now, but outside of any safe zone it should be possible to salvage ships damaged by crash, or maybe even after a grace period if it happens in a safe zone.

To me this says there is no risk to test flying a ship, flying a risky heavy load or even just going around the planet casually. The owner might endure time sinks to repair their ship, build a new one to fly to the crash, having to walk to it, etc.... and thats sort of content, I guess. Unfortunately, not being able to salvage a crashed ship is Anti-Emergent Gameplay. I strongly disagree with this. A salvager has to HOPE that someone gets so upset they abandon their crash or that its worth so little they dont care and abandon. The frequency of that happening is a tiny fraction of the frequency of crashes in general and so I view it as Anti-Emergent Gameplay. NQ consciously chose to significantly reduce the opportunities to salvage ships and that is in conflict with the things they say on stream... stream after stream. I mean, even if someone crashes they have an opportunity to go try and beat salvagers which they will likely win every time except crashes at markets. It's not like its a lopsided "fight".
 
I don't like to throw stones at NQ on the regular outside of satirical meme'ing .... but this one is really frustrating.