Wyndle
-
Posts
600 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Wyndle
-
-
21 hours ago, Kurosawa said:
Personally i would say DU isn't worth 13€/mon, NQ has pretty much given up on DU, there are only token updates from time to time. I think at this stage it is a pet project that they don't have the will to terminate. Only chance that DU will ever be something is if 1 of the other project NQ has diverted resources to is a total and complete overhaul of DU
I do recall seeing something about NQ working on a UE5 project. Perhaps that could be DU2?
As for the NQ's will to end DU, I suspect that it is only being kept online to recoup as much as possible for the investors. The mesh exporting tool gives a glimmer of hope that DU2 may be able to import the constructs but hope and NQ are an unstable combination thus far. Obviously I am still interested, but my enthusiasm is near-zero.
-
6 hours ago, blundertwink said:
For a company that once promised to "do much better" with transparency and communication, they are very committed to the opposite
Don't re-read the ToS or community rules.
-
3 hours ago, xTru said:
I`ve promised my self so many times that I will no longer invest in crowd founded games....
At this point crowd funded games appear to be almost exclusively grift. There needs to be an aggressive middle party that has some authority over the project or there's too much money sitting on the table without anyone watching where it goes. I am not opposed to the general concept of crowd funding but the current iterations are broken with regard to game development.
IMO, a crowd funded hostile corporate takeover of a studio has a better chance of completing a project and less financial risk to boot. A hand picked exec team for a newly created studio would be ideal rather than handing money to a black box with a studio name already attached.
-
Not just AAA sub prices, but a price increase at launch.
There are a few devs that I have had brief positive interactions with but my overall experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth for NQ. I held more hope for DU than NQ earned and I ignored warning signs I should not have so I accept my part of the blame. I even got my hopes up when I saw an unread icon in the patch notes section, hoping for even the tiniest bug fix to be tossed in.
If the goal was disenchantment, disillusionment, or demoralizing then congrats. You win.
-
Not even a hint of giving thought to another patch... backers complain of not getting physical rewards... and the mesh exporter feels like a "save what you can" tool before shutting it down forever.
-
10 hours ago, Hirnsausen said:
Finally, waited a long time for that.`I will use a Liquid Resin printer, to get really smooth surfaces. And then paint and weather all surfaces that are not transparent.
QUESTIONS
1
I assume, the blueprint will be used for the export, is that correct?
2
will the STL files also contain the ship interior? That would be the best, as then we can use transparent plastic for the 3D print, maybe even separating different areas (like a plastic model kit) and painting some areas before assembling all 3D-printed parts.! Can the 3D export contain interior to enable really cool 3D printed ships later onThe feature name suggests that the entire mesh would be exported, to include interior walls at the least. The example images also imply that components will be included in the mesh. Not sure if the stair stepping in the speeder is due to the scale of the ship or settings in the print.
-
If only this had happened a year ago...
I miss playing with DU's voxel engine but not nearly enough to justify the sub. I don't miss the chores.
-
DU may have been designed as an MMO but I question that it ever lived up to the Massively part of that acronym. There are more full population, invite-only minecraft servers than DU players using the steam client.
-
11 hours ago, blundertwink said:
🤷♂️
They've not officially confirmed that the game is no longer under development, but that's the reality. NQ is focused on their three other game projects.
The CEO's recent LinkedIn post says:
DU hasn't changed much since the wipe because they haven't been developing it and have no plans to do so.
Player counts seem closer to around 35-40 peek in recent days -- counts seem to be slowly decreasing still, but I'm surprised they are even this high.
I have been watching for signs of hope but the forums have all but died. At this rate I doubt I will achieve the forum post count goal I set for myself years ago without spamming or being a Steve Martin level of Jerk.
TBH, I am surprised NQ still keeps the lights on for this game.
-
9 hours ago, Cobqlt said:
They keep a high cost sub and this "unsub and you lost everything except 10 core and 1 tile"
"This is a nice build. It'd be a shame if ya missed a weekly tax and monthly protection payment."
-
On 12/10/2023 at 2:29 PM, mghtyred said:
I'm guessing another 50 years or so waiting for Kickstarter physical rewards. Sound about right?
And I thought EU law on such things was supposed to be relatively strict?
-
On 12/4/2023 at 9:58 AM, blundertwink said:
What does "sell to the players" actually translate to practically...? Who governs the data and credit card transactions? Who owns the AWS servers and is liable for paying that bill? Who is liable if vendor or players decide to start a lawsuit?
It would need a central creative figure and a board trusted by at least 1/3rd of the player base to even be worth considering. Getting a few of the streamers involved couldn't hurt. Anything other than an organized effort is outright a waste.
On 12/4/2023 at 9:58 AM, blundertwink said:VC's aren't known for being creative, so I think they will hold DU's tech (because no one would pay what they need for this crap) and swing big with the other projects...I doubt the VC gives much of a crap about the community, and by the way.....they do own every single creation that people are making right now.
The VC would only be aware of the community if there were a massive snail mail campaign by the majority of the community. And your last sentence above is one of the big reasons why I opted to stop playing before my subs expired. I am relatively certain that the people who actually care about DU have zero influence over the VC. A genuine buyout campaign would be newsworthy. I made the suggestion lightly because it couldn't hurt to discuss it but I don't think anything will come of it.
-
On 12/1/2023 at 11:40 AM, Hecticus said:
Under New Management
I'm interested. On an ever slightly related note, what would you imagine a player run buyout to cost? Since NQ isn't developing it they may be keeping it alive to sell, right?
-
21 hours ago, blundertwink said:
This idea that DU would do fine if "only it had adverts" is strange.
The whole time I was having flashbacks of fan "save our show" campaigns that generally flop. The only thing that brought back old shows were reboots, and it is even more rare for those to be hits than first run shows.
I won't say it can't work but I wouldn't wager a single molecule on it having an impact. -
On 11/17/2023 at 10:06 AM, blundertwink said:
I think there will definitely be a reckoning on the horizon, especially for the many firms focusing on AI-driven UGC or AI-driven assets in general.
And when you think about games like Minecraft (often cited as an example of the power of UGC), the actual engagement point (at least IMO) isn't really the things people create, it's the act of creation itself...
When studio CEOs and leaders talk about how generative AI or UGC will change gaming, it's almost always from the widget-driven perspective where these people view making games like a factory, since that's the process they can understand. Producing more "widgets" with less people will of course lead to better things from their perspective.
Not better, though, because they don't talk in language like that....they talk about how it will "vastly increase retention".
It's kind of like claiming that AI will make writing novels much better, since AI can provide "more words with less time". Only idiots would believe that the quality of a novel relates to the "amount of content" it provides.
When you're making something as complex and artistic as a game, CEOs and leadership often get in the way. This push for trying to make their own users develop the game so that they can capitalize on it "forever" is going to backfire because those same CEOs can only view games as cash registers.
I hope that games like BG3 send a clear message about what the market actually craves -- quality, not just quantity. I highly doubt NQ's leadership has learned this even after investing 9+ years in DU.
Aye, AI is a tool with near limitless potential but just how many monkeys fudge-flinging around typewriters would it actually take to stumble across Shakespeare? The tool is only as good as the person or process using it (doubly so for processes). If you're going to toss BG3 and Minecraft on the comparison heap then I'll raise you NMS, SC.
Afterwards we can take Todd and Bethesda behind the shed. -
6 hours ago, CptLoRes said:
If you pay money for something, you want to own it. Simple as that.
Now that you word it that way...
...a monthly rental fee to own digital goods is an oxymoronic concept. 'nuff said. -
Anecdotal Evidence, however plentiful, will only ever be anecdotal. You may know people who shy away from a subscription but that is not actionable from a corporate standpoint. Also, the numbers you're throwing out seem to contradict your own statements about "trying" the game. Comparing a $30-50 one time charge to a $15 game time code (no risk of forgetting the sub) suggests those people may be using cost as an excuse to not bother trying the game. I pre-paid a year sub for each of 3 accounts on the release hype (before the sub price increase) which only cost me a little more than Bethesda was asking for the supreme package of Starfield-loading-screens at pre-release a year later.
Now that we're more than a year beyond the release of DU the real world economy is in much worse condition and DU development appears to be stalled out (how many total bullet points in the last several patch notes?). I love the flight engine and the building tools but there really isn't anything more being offered in DU IMO. I can get the same or better atmosphere flight from a slew of sims and while there's not a ton of space games DU isn't uncontested there either.
As for building: Why should I slave over doing the work that other studios pay teams of artists to do? If RMT were in DU I could see an argument for earning a living through that effort but otherwise it's only an ego treadmill. I could see building just for artistic release and personal pleasure if there weren't so many chores and limitations tied to it.
All of that said, and without touching on any of the controversies and bugs from the past, it doesn't look good for DU.
-
16 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:
Considering the game isn't really finished, and there are no major updates planned, the numbers seem higher then i would expect.
MMO's are like sharks. If they stop moving, they start to die. If this was a standard MMO with nothing really unique to offer, i don't think anyone would be playing at all right now.
Saying the numbers don't justify further development doesn't make sense to me, when the current numbers are due to no further development being planned.
It seems to me that there are still a lot of people who are interested in the game's potential. But they're all just watching now, maybe playing a bit here and there, and waiting to see what NQ does next.
I don't expect anything at this point. But if NQ doesn't finish the game or sell it to someone who wants to finish it, then i'll just be waiting for someone else to make a game like this.
Baring some miracle of a secret 1.5 plan, I'd say it's finished. There have been too many things taken away to be focused on the hope of potential at this point. Potential mattered pre-release, now we're looking at results in the wake of SC's latest convention and compared to a 20+ year old MMO. SC probably won't be officially launched before 2030 but they're showing real tortoise level progress. What has DU brought to the table so far?
-
44 minutes ago, vylqun said:
If Steamcharts show 50-60 concurrent players, then the actual amount should be 400-800. Still not a lot, but also not as bad as you make it sound.
Sure, there are significantly more players than steam numbers. The same is likely true of the OG MMO, EQ, which has 10 to 25 times the numbers of DU on steam.
EQ launched in 1999 and hasn't spent anything on advertising that I'm aware of for more than a decade. I didn't even know it was on Steam until a youtuber dropped a video "playing so you don't have to." So I ask, how good or bad are DU's Steam numbers? NQ may be able to maintain the current players count for a couple of decades like EQ, but that isn't growing nor pushing profits. I guess the real question is, what is NQ planning going forward? I would think EQ is still alive due to active development and new expansions but I could be wrong.
-
Has the PvE event made any changes or any verifiable impact to the solar system or any celestial body within? Is the lore completely encapsulated within what is effectively instanced-only content?
-
5 new forum posts in the past week with 1 being a repeat question that was literally answered weeks earlier and another a necro post from 2 years ago.
At what point does NQ decide the forums are an unnecessary expense?
-
19 hours ago, CptLoRes said:
Bottom line is that despite all the early stage questions we made about game design, NQ felt they knew better and painted themself into a corner by making a cloud based system that does not scale well and is to costly to host.
And subsequently almost all design decisions since v23, has been about reducing cost instead of how to improve game play and make the game ohh you now.. fun to play.
Oh the irony. Wasn't the point of making it a cloud based system specifically for the intent of making the game dynamically scalable? Weren't all the features that were dropped (or handicapped) what attracted a significant portion of the initial interest?
-
22 hours ago, Dixiii said:
They also do nothing about selling DAC's. They exist, they can be used to pay for game, but no shop to buy them, no way to safe trade them. Why so? It's a proven method of attracting more players to the game (PLEX in EVE, gold in Albion and so on).
Same time they do strange thing, like adding new planets. Who need them? Were existing overcrowded? Were prices for resources too high? Absence of high tier resources? Answer is no for all above. Doing some other steps, that community propose, and attracting more players to make the game really mmo, and not almost single player, is much more important.
Please keep in mind that prior to DU NQ was not a game studio. We cannot assume when they started they were familiar with all the tropes and tools of the gaming industry. Now that their manpower has been reduced it seems we cannot expect more than bug fixes and treasure hunts.
Regarding DACs; If you look at the game economies in MMO games that have RMT (DAC, PLEX, WoW Token, etc) there are in-game consequences. WoW went on a massive inflation spree for several expansions before they started putting in more controls but the damage was done, WoW became pay to avoid the grind (aka pay to win) while simultaneously destroying their leveling experience.
DU's economy did not stabilize enough for the DACs to be used as planned without nuking the economy. If they turned DACs on with the game as it is now I am relatively sure it would kill what is left of the game.
-
17 minutes ago, JayleBreak said:
Number of Successfully Completed Missions: Very Easy: 377 Number of Failed Missions: Very Easy: 464i don't think that "Very Easy" means what you think it means.
How many of those failures were caused by the aliens being invisible to radar?
Haven't played since the wipe. How is the game going these days?
in General Discussions
Posted
There were layers of problems that prevented either feature from working reliably and JC had time enough to address it before his departure.
Even with significant churn at each major update many still had worsening performance and/or enjoyment with each iteration. The reduction in dev manpower became plainly obvious shortly after launch. So no, just adding those features would not have "saved" DU.