CptLoRes

I would bet real money that the 'first draft version' for planetary warfare (NQ speak for permanent), would involve some kind of repetitive mini game with long unskippable animations and annoying sound design.

And why is that? This is a very important question that NQ should ask themselves. Why is it that we now have an established pattern with new players starting out all smiles and positivity, but then as times goes and they gain more experience they start becoming more and more critical towards the game and NQ? Why is it that this pattern of positivity turning into negativity has repeated many times over the years as the game has progressed from pre-test to alpha, beta and release, and in fact become progressively worse as we got closer to release. And why is it that despite this destructive pattern been clear and obvious to everyone for a long, long time, that NQ never ever truly changed or did anything about it?

This game has been dying for a long time. Heck some of us started to see the patterns even before beta. And the simple fact is that as long as NQ continues to behave like well.. NQ, then this game has no chance what so ever. Or to quote Albert Einstein Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results And by now it should be clear that the lights have been turned off at NQ for a long time. And the few people still actually working on DU are just punching in hours to get the next pay check for as long as possible, and nothing more. Or to be more precise, when looking at how NQ operates is seems like they have been doing this for years and not just lately.

They used to.. But after the nerf it may be an idea to revisit using engine torque.

This is to date still the only thing NQ has ever mentioned that would justify a full terrain wipe. But even so based on what NQ has said about that topic previously, it still does not justify some kind of player resource wipe.

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.