CptLoRes

No need for NQ to be rocket scientists to know that 0.23 did not go as planned. And after reducing the schematic prices down from insane to high to at least prevent every single player from leaving the game, it was total radio silence about the issue for years. And it was only mentioned again recently when it fit their narrative to suddenly admit subscriptions where bad, and use that as an excuse for yet another server cost reducing patch. And the worst part in all this is that they are now doing EXACTLY the same types of mistakes all over again, ignoring feedback and pushing game breaking changes while pretending everything is fine.

There is actually potential for a great piece of alternative dystopian story/lore here, with Aphelia turning out to be a evil rogue AI hell bent on suppressing the human race and controlling their every movement.

It has been a while, so I don't remember the wording. But there is an option in the engine parameter so that engine thrust will also apply rotation as expected instead of the simplified axis only default.

Meanwhile in an alternative dimension we have Star Citizen refunding players with in game credits for lost playtime when they do a wipe even in Alpha. Because they actually value play time and care about keeping players I guess..

No worry. If NQ is going to shoot themself in the foot, they will first need to have an internal discussion and decide which foot to aim at. So we have plenty of time..

Good post Msoul, but it has to be a two way street to function.

I usually just say NQ and refrain from referring to any specific person. But this time I think it is warranted to say that Decard's statement has been proven very effective, at killing the game. And if the majority of comments are negative, that by itself is VERY much a data point that should NOT be ignored.

Regardless of server load/balancing issues being uses as an excuse for changes, the main problem still remains. There is hardly any fun way to make quanta in this game. Everything is a chore. Mining is a chore, missions is a chore, industry has been turned into a chore.. and so on. So unlike when grinding in other MMO's, there is no sense of achievement or progression. Just mindless tedium repeating the same tasks over and over. And that is just bad game design, no matter how you look at it.

It could be worse..

That argument goes both ways. I could just as well argue that it is pathetic (your words) that some players are demanding that veterans should lose all their effort, just so that (edit) new players get to feel special for a short while after release.

And why should a new player be able to catch up to a veteran at all (unless he is maxed out)? I don't understand how you can expect this to happen, since NQ would then have to reset BP for all players every time a new player joins.

The alternative is to be completely open about the dev process with your community and explain what is going on, and why things turned out the way they did. If you do this correctly there is almost no limit to what a community will accept and still be positive towards the game and company. But instead NQ has been the poster child for how to NOT interact with a community. And the truly tragic thing in all this is the "for sure" promises they made during the kickstarter, which is a big part of why I no longer have any respect left for NQ.

This is very similar to when they introduced the player core limitations with ridiculously low numbers that caused a huge backlash. But the thing that really scares me is that we have now reached a stage where people have become apathetic, and there are so few active players left that NQ will not get the message this time before it is to late and the game is totally unplayable at release.

That would only be for mainstream media. The term was defined by Neal Stephenson in the book Snow Crash (1992), which was an essential read for most nerds at the time (decent book and still worth a look). And in the 90's and early 2000 it was more popular to talk about cyberspace because it sounded cooler at the time, but the name is really interchangeable with metaverse. So the concept is nothing new, and the only thing that changed around 2014 was that facebook bought Oculus and suddenly there was real money involved and people where scrambling to try and get a piece of the pie.

Ahh.. Thanks for reminding me. I bought it a while ago to support the develuper, and now it looks to be maturing enough to give a try.

Experience... Game development while interesting, is probably the worst type of job I could imagine from a professional viewpoint. Lousy hours and if you want creative freedom doing indie games there is no job security. Only thing worse would be to slave for a crap company like EA, shudder. And frankly the worst costumers in the world, is probably gamers.. Nope, I am happy where I am (industrial automation/robotics) with stability, good hours, salary and professional costumers. And if I ever was to make a game in my spare time (as any software developer I have plenty of ideas, and there is still some niche possibilities in VR for games possible to make by a small team), it would be on my terms doing something under the radar until it was proper done. Then release on steam and only to do bug fixes as needed. But the thing that makes my blood boil with regards to NQ, is all the things and problems that would have been relatively easy to avoid if they just applied a tiny bit of introspection, listen more and used some established dev processes. And yes, I fully realize that this is armchair develupment and that I don't know what goes on behind closed doors. But after all these years there are patterns that are impossible to ignore. And no matter how you look at it, there is and has always been a big discrepancy between the size of NQ and the rate and quantity of features being put into the game.

Of course it should, and it has be done so countless times now. But as usual NQ is being NQ and doing their thing, frustrating players and burning bridges. And there should be no question that this is hurting NQ. The game is a ghost town, and most people can't be bothered any more as demonstrated by the sharp decline in replies to these ask-aphelia threads. And why should they? It is not like NQ is rewarding their feedback, and DU is definitely not the only game in town..

The hubris from so called metaverse companies is unbelievable, especially the one we all know very well. And yet the fact remains that Lindon Lab was more of a 'metaverse' company in 2002/2003 then NQ is even on the drawing board today. And you don't see Lindon Lab screaming "look how metaverse we are!" from the roof tops, because to them it is old news. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/History_of_Second_Life https://www.pcgamer.com/second-life-metaverse-interview/

Short version: No. Longer version: "Metaverse" is not mentioned a single time in the Kickstarter campaign for DU. The closest you get is their reference to creating an "online virtual civilization", but even that is used in a different context. So no, DU was initially not made to be a "metaverse" whatever that means. As for Novaquark "The metaverse company", here is another quote from the Kickstarter.

But it goes further then that. In the video they say specifically that "players should not be able to automate industry". Meaning that having players running around manually performing mindless and tedious tasks over and over again, is something they actually want to be an essential part of the game. And this is very different from having to input ore (and energy if there was such a system) at one end, to get the final product at the other.

sure.. Replace LUA with some kind of "drag and drop" rule system instead, and then allow LUA hooks into this system for the advanced users. But personally I find the RDMS system in DU to be MUCH harder to understand then LUA scripting.. Edit: But the essential part would be to not hamper advanced users just to try and appease any casual players short term, since the game would be depended on the more advanced players to bring actual content into the game. So that in the end it would be player made content (with easy to use interfaces) that would attract casual players, more then any tools made by NQ.

..and again it is because according to NQ's original premise it was never their job to design a market and a functional economy. All they had to do was to give us barter functionality and the elements/LUA api needed to run and maintain a market our self. But something happened just after the Kickstarter campaign completed, and it was like all the fundamental ideas for DU was just suddenly thrown out the window.

I completely agree, but the game equivalent of this would be to give players more freedom then traditionally allowed to be creative and make a MMO that would probable be a bit messy and maybe even "unfair" at times. And this is what pre-test/alpha should have been all about (and what I initially expected based on the Kickstarter), with NQ churning out all kinds of tools and functionality, and letting the test players (who at this stage expected there to be bugs and many, many problems) loose on them to see what happens.. and then once the chaos settled down (by actually listening to feedback) you would put a beta stamp on it and refine into release. But we all know they never ever came close to something like this, and instead tried to tightly control the game loops from day one.. despite seemingly not even knowing how the final game should look.

It was that initial idea that drew me towards this game also. And with JC coming from a science background I suspect he took inspiration from something called a "complex system", where the sum of many simple mechanics emerge into something much more complex like a complete ecosystem. So while a complex system had never been proven as the fundamental design in a MMO, there was ample precedence for it working in nature, economics etc. But all this was made completely and utterly pointless when NQ could not even bring the basic tools (simple mechanics) required for this into the game.

I have commented on this earlier. And my opinion is that a year is about the shortest time it takes for someone who has just reallocated to a new country/job, to go "ooooshit" and then find a good job (at their home country) again before leaving. And this is one of the many, many things I hope we get to know the truth off once NQ goes belly up (most likely) and past employees can speak out.