CptLoRes

Using TV/film is a bit misleading, since they will play loosely with both time references, distances and physics as needed for each scene to meet the narrative. I.e. as long as we have ships that operate in open space flying at the the speeds needed to travel such large distances with sane limits to acceleration, it is never going to be "like in the movies".

Yes, that was also my impression until NQ-Sesch said something to the effect of "until release in some months" in the Demeter video. Not sure if it was an actual slip, or just me putting meaning into something he said out of context. But the way he said it, I did not get the feeling he was talking about a Demeter patch release, but an actual game release. Sadly I forgot look a the timestamp when watching, and the video is to long for me to re-watch to find the time he said it. The second clue is the "Welcome our new CEO" post. Again, The wording in that sentence is open for interpretion, so I might be putting meaning into this that is not there.

Very true. But what boggles the mind, is that NQ has been operating in that "quick patch" mindset not for months, but years.. I.e. there never was a master plan that they could follow to make a finished game, or alternatively the plan was such that they where unable to implement it.

This problem is kinda complex. From one side the so called "air" brakes are a joke, with unrealistic performance that totally disregard any known aerodynamics. But.. On the other side we need such brakes to be able to land on markets etc. It does not matter how good you are at performing a realistic gliding approach, when your landing spot on the pad that looks totally clear one minute. Now suddenly renders in some construct out of nowhere, and all you can do is hope and pray for the best. So with the game LOD performing the way it does, we need the ability to slowly drop down from the sky. Regardless of how much of a cheat it may or may not be.

This game current only has one thing that works reasonably well and players truly enjoy, and that is building. So it seems counter intuitive to want to tear that down. And there already was a plan for a player driven economy with player driven markets and territory war. But as with many, many things NQ never got around to it. So now instead they degrade the game experience for everyone but the most hard core players, with quick to implement features.

The question is, how many of those inactive tiles are players just waiting for a game that is fun to play? To me at least, it seems for sure that a much higher percentage of them will never return and cancel the subscription once they start losing tiles for not being good citizens and playing the game at the frequency and style dictated by NQ.

Disclaimer, I don't actually think this is going to happen. But if we are going to start looking for worst case monetization schemes, I could easily see a situation where you suddenly had an option to pay for the territory tax with real money. They would probably package it into something more manageable and easy to swallow for players like the DAC, but still.

Not to mention that picking a tile for purely scenic reasons to make a cool base etc, is at best going to be a gamble with regards to keeping up with the tax etc.

This is just NQ standard procedure. The only time they listen is when players start actually leaving, and then they act all surprised and are like "we are listening and are going to fix this shortly". Followed a couple of months later by some quick-fix that always is something completely different from community suggestions, and brings lot's of unplanned collateral damage to the game. And the players that left are still gone, so the damage is done..

But that would be the second (third depending how you look at it with pre-releases) time they try this. There was already a beta soft-release (which is reality was an alpha by any normal definition), and they got no where other then dropping players like flies and burning bridges. So what has changed this time? Judging by how they are handling Demeter, nothing has really changed and NQ is still the same NQ as always. Meaning that the "release" will only be a repeat of the "beta" soft-release.

And if by some miracle it is not the death of DU, the type of game and players left will be something very different from what it was supposed to be (even more like EVE and less and less like DU the persistent MMO universe).

@Kobayashi I just answered you in the other thread, but I will do the same here also. NQ has strongly hinted that the game will be released by the end of this year. So Demeter going live is pretty much going to be the "finished" game they are going to release. Is the game ready to be released? No, not even close. But as mentioned, NQ has been going in circles for many years now, and they are running out of money.

I am sorry to burst your bubble, but NQ has been dropping hints about a release by the end of this year. And at the pace of development we have come to expect from NQ, that means Demeter going live will be the launch release..

Image a huge asteroid belt running through the entire universe, slowly rotating so that freshly spawned asteroids starts at one end and finally despawn when leaving the universe at the other end. And then you angle the plane of this asteroid belt so that all asteroids first have to travel through PvP space before entering the safezone. Voila. You now have a realistic meta where people get first pick at the good stuff by traveling to the PvP zones with hotter and hotter zones as you get closer to the initial spawn point of the asteroid belt in the universe (at the cost of a very long travel distances). And the asteroids that are not mined in the PVP zone are left as "scraps" for the safe zone miners with some hidden gems here and there that PvP miners have missed. And how much "scrap" that is left for the safe zone, is simply balanced by the total amount of asteroids spawned.

DU differs from EVE in one very important aspect. DU is/was supposed to be a persistent universe with unlimited terraforming and building. And as such, there need to be some mechanism for solo players and small orgs to be able to step away from the game for some time, and NOT lose all the work they have put into building permanent bases etc. As I see it, this is just another chapter in the build vs destroy balance problem, where a PvP'er can destroy in minutes something it took months for a builder to make. I.e the PvP'er wins by default, and the builders leave the game.

This so much. NQ has never been able to give us something that makes it possible to "find the fun" in DU. Their solutions be it the old mining system, flying missions etc. and presumably the new auto mining all end up feeling more like doing chores then playing a game. The only fun thing left (after they killed industry) in this game for non PVP'ers is building, and for some reason NQ keeps coming up with new plans to prevent us from doing that also.

There is also the small issue that DS6 has shown us that DU would not actually be able to handle a city with active players and constructs.

It is kinda telling when the UI reminds you of Everquest anno 1999...

What NQ/DU needs more then anything else is more customers/players. So not even NQ would consider making the game worse on purpose.. right? On the other hand, what really get to me is their inability to execute anything in a sensible fashion. Having some kind of mechanics that will free up inactive tiles is actually a good thing. But their implementation is truly and utterly bonkers, and riddled with so many obvious problems that it is mind blowing they are even considering it for the live servers. 1. As long as players are paying the subscription, they should own their own constructs. This was after all supposed to be a persistent building MMO universe. In fact this was the number one selling point of this game during the Kickstarter. An inactive tile means the players has stopped paying a subscription, not that they have not logged in the last week and done their daily chores as dictated by NQ (which is something that goes directly against the "make your own game" motto of the initial game premise). 2. The main feature of this game is building. So please NQ, for the love of... Stop making road blocks for people who actually want to build. You are now directing a large percentage of player time and building resources into just maintaining tiles. 3. Not everyone is a billionaire. I have been playing this game since day one, and currently I have something like 20mill in my account. I don't care about building a financial empire, running missions or grinding just for the sake of it. I just need enough resources to do my building experiments, enjoying the game the way I want, when I want to. All in accordance with the "make your own game" premise you said we should be able to do. So any frequent login requirement for chores and territory tax above some symbolic sum, means I cannot play my game. And is in effect a death sentence for me and I suspect a lot of the solo creative players. You know.. The people who actually make interesting content for the game. Content you are now trying to remove from the game..

Let's just hope the new "complexity restrictions" will not prevent us from actually using the vertex editor to create great works of art.

Where is the fun? This sounds a lot like a repetitive and boring RL job that you have to do, or else..

Yeah, the name Sanctuary moon suddenly got a new meaning. It will now be filled with DU veteran refugees storing their assets in case they want to some day return to the game.

Tell us what you think. Based on historic behavior from NQ I have my suspicions on what will happen for sure..

Problem with terraforming TAX is that it does not solve NQ's problem. NQ simply can't handle long term growth in the game, and that is why they introduced territory tax. Their goal is not to limit the rate of growth, but to actually remove long term growth. So in other words, DU the MMO game with persistent building is dead..

The problem NQ has is simply that after 5+ years of development, they never managed to make the server architecture needed to deliver the intended game. So all that is left for NQ to do, is to reduce the game down to something they can manage. Meaning that starting with 0.23 and much more visible now with demeter, all so called 'updates' are designed to remove user content and limit player growth. All nicely packed into a nice presentation about "reducing lag" and making a better looking game. And suddenly they also found time to make and release a vertex tool preview video, only the most requested feature in the game for as long as it has existed. Looks a lot like "Bread and circuses" for the masses to me.