Darrkwolf

Honestly I wanted more, but at least they are putting something out I guess...

Could we get some information on the various elements promised on Pre-Alpha and where they fit on the timeline for game, for example avatar vs avatar combat?

 

Could we get some information on the various elements promised on Pre-Alpha and where they fit on the timeline for game, for example avatar vs avatar combat?

 

Could we get some information on the various elements promised on Pre-Alpha and where they fit on the timeline for game, for example avatar vs avatar combat?

 

.

RIP Dual Universe. 
 
It was fun while it lasted.
Kind of?
 
I remember accidentally stumbling across a video of Dual Universe, the alpha feature showcase running ~50 minutes long. Boy oh boy was I impressed. In the past I've played things such as starmade, and empyrion, and always loved the idea of a space sci-fi and as a star wars fan myself, always building large scale stuff like star destroyers and blah. As fun as these games were to play, they always suffered from having next to no major interaction in multiplayer. As you can guess, the whole idea of Dual Universe being a space sci-fi sandbox in an MMO setting was an incredibly grand and alluring idea. I had plenty of fantasies and imaginations of how awesome DU could turn out to be, as many many others had too. Unsure of what exactly I can say without breaching NDA, I'll keep it vague. Playing the Alpha build was pretty frustrating lol. However, the community made up for a lot of DU's pitfalls. I had discovered a sort of 'role play' civilisation building community that spanned over years of living under a shell of tight NDA alpha development, which was quite interesting. Everyone was eager for DU to enter beta, and to get serious. To let go of needing to 'Role play' and just be able to take their metagaming to the next level in the persistent world of Dual Universe.

The Beta launch was certainly a real mouthful. Everyone rushed out the gates to make their mark in the world, a race to cement their existence into DU's solar system. Damn were there a lot of people, compared to the current population it's almost unbelievable. Even NQ didn't expect such a huge influx of players to jump in. This caused a lot of dumpster fires during the start of beta, and a lot of NQ's efforts were directed toward putting them out. It was choppy as hell, but it seemed like DU really had a major ingredient to succeed, player population. Regardless of the hugely buggy nature of the game which many people criticized as being no way near beta ready, especially paid beta ready, people still trucked on hopeful of what DU could be. One extremely common phrase among critics and players alike, was that DU had so much potential, and every one of them were right. 
 
With the introduction of larger than alpha resource nodes amongst all of the planets, and meganodes for each ore, DU experienced a huge boost in progression, as everyone grinded their brains out to collect as much ore as they could. Mega factories popping up left and right, in every nook and cranny. Production and resource exploitation at an all time high left NQ worrying about the fast paced progression they seemed to be quite uncomfortable with.
 
The idea behind DU was that it was oriented to group play in such a way that people would build organisations, alliances, countries, and civilisations. Unfortunately, apart from marketing efforts DU wasn't really setup to encourage any of this. Being weary of needing to RP to really do any of this, most older groups began to grow uneasy. The cause for this controversially being the implementation of safezones, and lack of territory warfare, which was a desired addition for the beginning of beta. Initially, the idea was that the only safe place in the solar system would be the Sanctuary moon. The absolute only reason for its current existence. Instead of a creative solution to allow organisations/nations to create their own safezones, their own mark in the solar system, we were given a very, very lenient absolute safe space. In my opinion, the sole existence of any safezones aside from the sanctuary moon works only to remove any incentive or encouragement for a nation or country to emerge in any part of the solar system. Everyone joined into DU with their own dreams, and their own desires of creation. And everyone was very much free to move about and do as they wished, on their own. It's likely NQ were forced along this path due to simply not having enough time to develop critical gameplay mechanics, coupled with problems among the studio itself, with none of the original team who initially worked on DU no longer even working at NQ. DU now has effectively turned itself from a promising civilisation building MMO, into a quiet, enormous and extremely overpriced museum for sci-fi voxel creations.
 
The PVP, and effects of it are nothing short of Pitiful.
 
NQ's move to stifle progression and control it's rate among DU, backfired miserably and completely decimated DU's saving grace, its player population. The introduction of update 0.23 unsettled and enraged SO many people, eesh. If you're reading this and your opinion is that 0.23 was a great patch, you clearly don't see the incredible damage that it's done to DU, NQ, and their PR. Enjoy your giant space museum while it lasts. NQ certainly took a major step back in communication in the aftermath of update 0.23, which only further annoyed the playerbase.

Recently a new Community Manager that went by NQ-Naunet was hired, and made strides in engaging with the remaining DU community. Only just recently, after only 4 months of working at NQ, Naunet has left NQ without a word. Naunet was much appreciated by the community, and her departure left a gaping hole in the communities confidence in NQ's ability to manage a community, sparking a recent freefall dive (absolute shitshow) in NQ's temporarily completely unmoderated Forums, with only NQ-Naerais left to hold the reins on a fragile and wavering community.
 
Another recent incident involving NQ deciding to completely remove ingame support, and discord support has also caused unease and frustration throughout the entire playerbase. Leaving the only form of support to the ticket system, which is famous taking up to a month or more for a response, and often the responses were extremely unhelpful. The removal of NQ's ingame support system basically blew up any players hope for help in navigating DU's buggy and problematic nature.

The ingame support team did an incredible job of handling many of the problems thrown at players, most of which simply made no sense to wait months for. Most of the tech support workers have left NQ after this move.
Their names are:
NQ-Wokk
NQ-Blacksun
NQ-Gallion
NQ-Astratum
NQ-Samaritan
NQ-Stargazer
NQ-Orion
NQ-Reaper
NQ-StarFire
NQ-Xeno
 
Apologies for anyone I've missed, but they've singlehandedly been through the rivers of buggy shit to ensure that players had the best possible experience in DU.\
 
Now that the support team is gone, Naunet is gone, any Liason between community and NQ non-existant, most people just want to see DU put out of its misery. Was a fantastic concept, but it seems like it'll just never work. With the whole idea of DU having millions of players, but only being attractive to a very niche group of resilient and hardcore players, and the recent decision of NQ, DU has just lost it's much needed momentum, and as we can see with numbers pulling out of NQ's roster, including more prominent and notable names, faith in NQ's ability to deliver DU as advertised, promised, and pitched, are at an all time low.
 
Even JC's in rough shape after 0.23, poor dude.
 

 
As for JC himself, mad respect for the dude. Starting a brand new company to develop and handle his dream game (as was ours), was bold and brave of him. We all wished him the best in his endeavours, and are all sad to see what is to come of DU.
 
If you're new and wanting to get into DU, I'd advise against it. If you have friends to play with and wanna muck around DU, all power to you. DU isn't really that pricey, probably won't last for another 3 months anyway.
But for anyone looking for what DU was pitched as, it's looking like a hard skip. 

And now some random memes to dust off the post.


 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


RIP, nobody wanted you here. Except for maybe your competitors, although they probably feel guilty about it now.

"To provide better support we will now treat everyone equally and make you wait 1 months for issues that could be solved within minutes if you pm a dev in discord or ingame"
Really? Sorry that i post here, but really? For better support? Does NQ think we are retarded? At least don't come up with such an obvious lie as excuse when you don't want to provide the manpower for real time support...

Wait, people pay money monthly for an mmorpg and get no technical support on weekends? What kind of service is that?

Since the ticket queue is bound to be overwhelmed, this is just a friendly little announcement that Eyes & Ears Search and Rescue is ready and able to accommodate players requests for situations that do not fall outside another players ability to assist. Aside from the typical rescue, repair, refuel, and transport situations, this non-exhaustive list of situations include:
 
Crashing and respawning
Surrogate sessions swapping places with your avatar
Someone leaving your space station unaware your ship is docked to theirs
Constructs getting stuck up in the air
 
This does not include:
Respawning inside your friends construct with no way out
Glitching under someone's base
Adjuster locks (get out and back into the pilots seat)
Disobeying the rules and NQ teleporting you to some moon 1,000 SU away with no ore/resources/constructs.
 
For any requests, we ask that you join our Discord server and submit a ticket and our dispatchers will help you find a rescuer to get you back up on your feet.
 
While NovaQuark is pulling back in support, Eyes & Ears is stepping forward as a player run solution to fill that void.

Honestly I wanted more, but at least they are putting something out I guess...

Honestly I wanted more, but at least they are putting something out I guess...

While razor thin at this point, yes I do. Frankly I have taken precautions in game to be able to step away any moment. I'm at the point where unless NQ shapes up and finally starts showing they are actually serious about their community and their game I may move away.. And some will rejoice no doubt if that happens
 
I think a big difference is that I have always realized that what NQ was promising and saying they wanted to achieve would not be possible for them and so my expectations, while still feeling good about the game, were lower and I guess more realistic than a lot of other players. To see them even manage to not meet my expectations  I guess is a disappointment in itself.
 
I want to be clear here, I actually think there is a some pretty smart and passionate people working at NQ and there is a lot of them with a fair amount of understanding of the business and what should happen. It is IMO those in middle and upper management positions that are pretty much clueless about what needs to happen and what needs to change. And that is where the "we heard you but we're not listening" comes from. Unless these people come to their senses and start changing or step aside for those that can accomplish change to take over, NQ will not be abel to pulll this one out of the fire. 
 
Frankly, I think NQ should drop the Paris office and focus on/relocate to Montreal entirely. It may hurt in the short term but it will give the company and the game a chance going forward. As I expect they are pretty strapped for cash by now, something will need to give and completely moving to one location, which then logically would be Montreal, makes actual sense..
 
 
Honestly? not much. Everything here once more points at an idea from one person thinking this is the one mechanic that will save the game. And it won't as there is no framework to support the feature which in itself could be great just like the schematics system is fine but without the mechanics to feed into such a system (and yes, as is the case in EVE where they got the idea from). What NQ seems to want to do is very much like the jobs board in Eco, it works really well there because the game actually drives and promotes player interaction and co-operation at every level, not shove "you _will_ work in/as a group/org, we will nerf your options and buff org options until you do" down the players throats the way NQ is currently doing in DU.
 
NQ will once again rush this, release a badly tested patch with a broken/half done feature which needs a lot of work and in the process they wil break more stuff as well since there is a lot of stuff that is broken in game and just covered up by band aids.

well thing is, you *still* have faith in them doing the right thing - which I had back then but lost it about 1,5 years ago... I realized that they just won't (and can't) deliver what was promised and they now just try to save it from being a complete trainwreck. It's just a conglomerate of what there could be - dreams, hopes, well articulated ideas to get ppl dreaming. But that's all DU is. The actual game and the actual mechanics aren't even close to how they pitch the game now or in the past.
 
and quite honestly: what do you expect from the mission system? There isn't anything to do in DU except mining. So the ONLY mission there will be is: bring me X amount of ore/elements to Y (created by players) and maybe some "NPC" missions by aphelia to transport goods from market X to market Y to have a second true quanta faucet. Nothing more will be there because DU lacks so many other mechanics. Sure, they can build on that later on, but for now (and I suspect for some months) that will be the only thing to do with missions. 
Will that be enough for ppl? We will see
Will that new money faucet even be viable? We will see
But imho it will be so basic and rudimentary that it won't get ppl truly interested - since those "bring me X ore/elements" is already in the game with market orders. But oh wait, economy doesn't work....

Bad decision, you managed to fuck the ecomony. The whole reason for the new factory system was to expend the End-game and now that is gone. Because a bunch of people have every schematic in the game.

Bad decision, you managed to fuck the ecomony. The whole reason for the new factory system was to expend the End-game and now that is gone. Because a bunch of people have every schematic in the game.

Bad decision, you managed to fuck the ecomony. The whole reason for the new factory system was to expend the End-game and now that is gone. Because a bunch of people have every schematic in the game.

Disclaimer: I know that MMOs are ones where everything is requiring constant balancing however, this is to point out an overwhelmingly obvious imbalance in the game that needs to be addressed soonish.
 
After taking some hours to review some of the voxel I noticed something very problematic.
T-5 Voxel overall, is not worth even bothering to use on ships.
 
(Side Note)
As far as design is goes, The only Textures that are easy to use for looks are:
Gold Panel/Painted
Niobium Painted/Panel
Manganese Panel/Painted
 
Now back to the Voxel HP
It's understandable that the supposed market that NQ would want players to create would be created based on items made, the time it takes the make them, the ore required to make them and how long it took to get and refine said ore. However, when it comes to PVP or even the PvE aspect of the game voxels are horribly imbalanced and totally useless to even sell on the market. I'll first dive into the PVP aspect of Voxel's HP, Resistances, Rough estimated time to mine raw ore. Time to refine ore into Pure.
 
 
For PVP: Voxel HP and the issues that currently exist
After running the numbers I've found that basically all T5 voxel (pures AND products) are just about the worst thing you can chase after for ship defense.
 
I'll start by breaking down a T3 Voxel (Silver) and a T2 Voxel Copper and compare it to Manganese and Vanadium (Both T-5 voxels):
 

              
 
HP against the different damage:
 
           Silver (T-3 Voxel)                                 Manganese (T-5 Voxel)                                                  Vanadium (T-5 Voxel)                                    Copper (T-2 Voxel)
         (Antimatter Res.)                                                         (Antimatter Res.)                                                                                (Antimatter Res.)                                                                (Antimatter Res.)
6713 * 0.25 = 1678.25                                   4614.00 * 0.30 = 1384.2                                                     3840 * 0.35 = 1344                                          5734 * 0.20 = 1146.8
1678.25 + 6713 = 8391.25                           1384.2 + 4614 = 5998.2                                                     1344 + 3840 = 5184                                        1146.8 + 5734 = 6880.8
8391.25 HP against AM dmg.                    5998.2 HP against AM dmg.                                              5184 HP against AM dmg.                      6880.8 HP against AM dmg.
            (EM Res)                                                                            (EM Res)                                                                                                          (EM Res)                                                                  (EM Res)
6713 * 0.15 = 1006.95                                 4614.00 * 0.30 = 1384.2                                                         3840 * 0.25 = 960                                         5734 * 0.1 = 573.4
1006.95 + 6713 = 7719.95                         1384.2 + 4614 = 5998.2                                                         960 + 3840 = 4800                                      573.4 + 5734 = 6307.4
7719.95 HP against EM dmg.                    5998.2 HP against EM dmg.                                              4800  HP against AM dmg.                    6307.4 HP against EM dmg.
          (Kinetic)                                                                                 (Kinetic)                                                                                                           (Kinetic)                                                                      (Kinetic)    
6713 * 0.20 = 1342.6                                  4614.00 * 0.35 = 1614.9                                                           3840 * 0.30 =1152                                       5734 * 0.15 = 860.1
1342.6 + 6713 = 8055.6                             1614.9 + 4614 = 6228.8                                                            1152 + 3840 = 4992                              860.1 +5734 = 6594.1
8055.6 HP against Kinetic dmg                    6228.9 HP against Kinetic dmg                                            4992 HP against AM dmg.                  6594.1 HP against Kinetic dmg
         (Thermic)                                                                            (Thermic)                                                                                                         (Thermic)                                                                       (Thermic)  
6713 * 0.20 = 1342.6                                4614.00 * 0.25 = 1153.5                                                         3840 * 0.30 =1152                                            5734 * 0.15 = 860.1
1342.6 + 6713 = 8055.6                          1153.5 + 4614 = 5767.5                                                          1152 + 3840 = 4992                                   860.1 +5734 = 6594.1
8055.6 HP against Thermic dmg.           5767.5 HP against Thermic dmg.                                       4992 HP against AM dmg.                   6594.1 HP against Thermic dmg.
 
 
         Silver (T-3 Voxel)                                Manganese (T-5 Voxel)                                               Vanadium (T-5 Voxel)                                         Copper (T-2 Voxel)
(AM Res.) 8391.25 HP                                       5998.2 HP                                                                                5184 HP                                                            6880.8 HP
(EM Res) 7719.95 HP                                       5998.2 HP                                                                                 4800  HP                                                          6307.4 HP
(Kinetic) 8055.6 HP                                           6228.9 HP                                                                                  4992 HP                                                           6594.1 HP
(Thermic) 8055.6 HP                                         5767.5 HP                                                                                  4992 HP                                                           6594.1 HP
 
Rough time to mine materials:
For Copper it takes about 10-15 minutes to both find and mine out combined
For Silver, for me at least, it takes anywhere from 15 - 35 minutes to find and mine out a single node
For Manganese takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour and 10 minutes to both find, dig and mine up a single node
For Vanadium it takes me about 1 hr and 20 minutes to upwards of 1.5 hrs to find, dig and mine up a single node (most time is spent finding/scanning for it)
 
These times scale up as planets become more claimed over time and thus SHOULD be increasing their value at varying exponential rates. Which should thus show on the markets however, because Silver and Copper are more used in PVP none of the T-5 voxel ever see the battle field and thus never see the market (for this and many other reasons). The value for T-5 only exists within crafting and scrap for repairing elements in PVP. Even when people have found super nodes of T-5 rarely will you ever see any of them convert the raw ore into Voxel. Especially when the schematics are priced so high and the ROI on the voxel in PVE and PVP is non-existent.
 
Arguements against this:
Well the HP is based on weight per cubic meter Response: Yes, however the weight is totally negated and barely even a factor when you have the T2 - T3 engines, the Talents for those engines for placement, AND for usage AND for weight reduction. So overall, HP based on weight per cubic meter is negligible. ESPECIALLY when it comes to PvP Well there's other uses for T-5 voxels Yes and no, T-5 Voxel being used for armor is a pointless journey to embark on since The Textures are extremely difficult to find a use/flow for other designs. (believe me, I tried for days) The HP to weight, EVEN FOR ATMO PVP is negligible when considering the talents (placements and handling) and the higher teir engines The only true use for T5 ore is for either Scrap or crafting. Use for voxel is pointless since Gold, Silver and even COPPER are better than a T-5 voxel. WHY IS THERE EVEN A T-5 VOXEL IF IT'S WORSE TO USE THAN ANY OF THE OTHER ONES?!?!?! In terms of ATMO PvP? I'd just use Silver or Copper because T-5 is just that bad from start to finish. Other use for it is to recycle it into scrap... which begs the question why it was turned into voxel in the first place... Well there is a market for T-5 Yes, barely and only for pointed  and specific crafting approaches, because you'll never see T-5 voxel sold on the market when it offers ZERO value for anyone. Also, The amount of time it takes to mine up the T-5 and refine it makes deciding to NOT create T-5 voxel a much easier choice since it's totally useless. Even the new product Voxel offers less than most of the T2 voxels and even some T1 voxel.  
 
T-5 Voxel for PVE (Markets):
There not much to be said on the PvE side of the game for T-5 voxels. Because if T-5 voxel is useless to PvPers then why would a PvEer bother trying to sell something no one will buy when they could make ten or hundreds of thousands of quanta for T2 - T4 voxel?
 
Conclusion:
T-5 Voxel is pointless and begs the question of why it even exists since T-2 voxel is better than T-5 for both Space and Atmo armor especially when you consider the following points against making T-5 voxel: Average time required to Scan, find, mine, refine, craft design the voxel/ship Textures of the Painted and Panel (minus the Manganese and Niobium and Gold) voxel for nearly all of them are just horrific The resistances or HP for All T-5 do not justify even thinking of crafting the Voxel for PvP usage. Again, timing to make T-5 voxel is not justifiable Again, the Textures of Voxel's Painted and Panel Voxel are extremely difficult to use. The pattern voxel approach should've been reused in terms of the next set of designs.  
Ways to Correct:
Increase the Resistance for T-5 voxel so that it MAKES SENSE to decide if chasing T-5 voxel is worth chasing after. Reduce the time it takes to create T-5 voxel or increase the time it takes to make T2, T3 voxel since T-2, T3 and T4 voxel are ALL better than T5 lol (Even I'm not too sure about this one, but total time to make doesn't justify how useless it is) Review the painted and panel textures added into the game and attempt to mirror the approach used for the Pattern Voxel. (If you claim T-5 anything is supposed to be the best for most things then why does it look so crappy? if it had better or worse stats wouldn't you at least want it to look nice??) Adding in negative resistances for voxels that should OBVIOUSLY have it. For example: Why is gold not weakest against thermic damage? Why is marble (T-1) with zero resistances STILL stronger than T-5 voxels?? None of this makes any remote sense here. DO NOT NERF SILVER AND COPPER JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE USES IT AS A REPLACEMENT FOR STEEL AND THINK THIS WILL FIX THE ISSUE. People will end up flocking to the next best thing and the cycle will continue until you make the decision to actually balance the right mechanic of the game (T-4,5 Resistances) instead of just NERFing stuff just because everyone's using it. Nerfing solves nothing if you hadn't noticed.  
P.S - Titanium is a material used for 95% of jet engine parts because of it's insanely high resistance to heat and extreme strength under high velocities. I'm saying as a jet engine inspector so seeing this was a serious pain point for me.


 
(Skipping past the math)               
AM Res. HP = 3402
EM Res. HP = 3543.75
Kin Res. HP = 3969
TH Res. HP = 3969
 
Copper (T-2 Voxel)
AM Res. HP = 6880.8 HP
EM Res. HP = 6307.4 HP
Kin Res. HP = 6594.1 HP
TH Res. HP = 6594.1 HP

(Skipping past the math)
AM Res. HP = 3607
EM Res. HP = 3896.1
Kin Res. HP = 3751.8
TH Res. HP = 3751.8
 
Copper (T-2 Voxel)
AM Res. HP = 6880.8 HP
EM Res. HP = 6307.4 HP
Kin Res. HP = 6594.1 HP
TH Res. HP = 6594.1 HP
 


(Skipping past the math)
AM Res. HP = 6696
EM Res. HP = 5456
Kin Res. HP = 5456
TH Res. HP = 5456
 
Copper (T-2 Voxel)
AM Res. HP = 6880.8 HP
EM Res. HP = 6307.4 HP
Kin Res. HP = 6594.1 HP
TH Res. HP = 6594.1 HP
 
So T-5 Voxels are BARELY better than Stainless steel which is actually suppose to be pretty strong
 
 

And yet again, NQ has proven they're out of touch with how the players have been playing the game.
 
Setting up a factory to produce everything one desires is just the first step, for many of us, through ensuring we have a reliable supply of elements and material with which to build our ships. The market is unreliable or too time consuming. Why would we spend hours traveling to different markets to pick up various ship building parts when we can just mine ore from our tiles and make what we need?

This pretty much sums up the exact intention NQ has for this update. They want to brute force the markets into people's gameplay unless they are part of the big orgs who will continue to basically take care of their own internally and now will also be able to to benefit form the small player groups and solo players by controlling the markets.
 
NQ wants it this way and made the changes to achieve this.

Let's call them BPO's and BPC's.

Regardless they had an bug, we can atleast agree on that. If they knew about a bug for days and they don't tell their community that using the bug is an exploit or they don't fix it. 
Then it shouldn't be a ban for using something that could easily be a feature. Communication is key and they have failed over and over with it. For example, when they enabled force respawn = lose inventory, a lot of players force respawned before they even put out the patch notes about this change.

 

I have heard of other players reporting it and seen posted proof of the same. I have filled various tickets, most of them have not been touched in weeks, to months. Including bug reports. It is hard to take the standpoint that this should be a ban, when it is enteirly the fault of NQ, and when the ticket proecss sucks so much.
 
It is hard to justifiy this action when NQ came out a week ago and said that they wouldn't get invovled in RDMS issues and that it was the players responsibility to ensure this doesn't happen to them.
 
This is NQ's fault they need to deal with it themselves. When @Vifrevaertand his crew stole nearly an entire factory from DSI, it was a mess in DSI, and yeah a lot of the people who had stuff stolen from them were pissed (and still are), and while they would have wanted a ban, it isn't fair to the people who stole the stuff. Just like in this case it isn't fair to ban the people who stole voxels from a market. You have marketed your game towards people who played EVE, and if you didn't expect this to happen then you need to get better rules.

As long as you are prepared to ban everyone who has and will do something on this serverity (all item duplication included) then I think should be allowed. Else, you should unban these guys and use this as the policy for the future.

If it takes NQ weeks to fix major exploits, there's bigger issues at play. 
 
If it takes NQ weeks to even open a ticket, there's bigger issues at play. 
 
If it takes NQ days to acknowledge an exploit, there's bigger issues at play. 
 
People have been making MMOs for over 20 years now...I don't understand how NQ struggles to handle well-understood concepts so poorly.
 
Patch exploits quickly because they ruin the economy. Make sure your customer support can answer tickets within a reasonable time (6 weeks is absolutely absurd). 
 
We are doing our part as players by paying the price they set...if they still can't afford enough support to move tickets along or fix exploits promptly, something is very wrong.
 
$20/minimum for each player that joined beta isn't a tiny amount of money. It is definitely enough to scale up support and open tickets...and if isn't? That's still their fault for not doing basic math to figure out a workable price that would allow them to scale the game...
 

Whether this has happened due to a bug (i.e. Marketplaces were never supposed to use RDMs but be "hardcoded, which IMO is highly unlikely due to the fact everything in the game uses the same systems that players use, even market tiles are claimed using territory units) or due to incorrect settings in RDMs, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. Did the players make a mistake by making and publicizing the "ultimate heist" on Reddit? Possibly. Most likely yes. However that only sets the scenery to what is essentially a "make or break" decision on the NQ's side.

Had NQ reacted in good humor, fixed the problem, and owned up to their mistake, they'd actually build and reinforce trust of their community. They would've come out on top, as a team that can take responsibility for their mistakes and fix them. As someone with years of community management experience, I'd go a step beyond that: I'd create a "ruin of a marketplace" with a memorial plaque that would say something along the lines of "MP15 has fallen prey to a legendary group of bank robbers", to make it part of the lore. Then I'd build a new Marketplace next to it, and recover lost items to the unfortunate players who had their stuff listed. The lesson is simple: Does it seem like bad press? Take ownership of it, turn it around, make it work for you.

It's very unfortunate that instead NQ reacted the way they have. Their response, and reaction of Discord moderators who started handing out mass bans for even mentioning the incident is what creates bad press. I mean, it's their choice to make. Just not a choice that I'd make as community manager.

NQ Said:
That would mean it is in some way an issue with the permissions system (RDMS). This doesn't appear like an exploit, or hack. Its was just a bug that people used.

Fundemetnally, after it was reported three days ago, NQ should have came out and said that this is an exploit, please do not use it. Then this would not have happened, and if it did the bans would be 100% justified.
 
Its not that hard. There was a bug after an update in EVE, it took a couple of hours (at max) for it to be declared an exploit so people wouldn't use it, and if they did a sanction could have been applied to their account.
 
NQ just needs to improve their communication.