Pleione

I originally wanted to make a "Stargate Universe" class ship - something that might take a month to fly to a new star system, but had everything on it needed to build a stargate to that system. Of course, that goal had to change: 1st they disabled industry on dynamic cores - ok, can still build a huge cargo ship that could then setup shop on a space station, having the basics with it. Then they pushed "Galaxy" out from 1st half 2020 to "post production" Finally they added schematics, which could only be bought at bots. The cost of those schematics shut me down.

I'm sitting on my now useless Large Space core - which had a fully functional manufacturing plant capable of making Warp Beacons and keeping my mining cargo transports full of warp cells. Its 98% idle now because of schematics and the layering of manufacturing levels. I was two days away from my first warp beacon going into the oven. After 0.23, it was going to cost me 840M just for the schematic to make that happen. Haven't really played since, although I check in occasionally. Still have 688 days of skills in the queue.

I waiting, knowing it may never happen, for a wipe and a backing off of schematics as they currently exist. I'd at least like the illusion that a solo player can have a meaningful experience in the game. Sorry, but a vision of spending a few years to become the universes best Advanced LED manufacturer is not exciting to me.

What we have been hearing for 3 years is "Its alpha/beta - we are testing functionality. Performance will be address later". e.g. We hope to attract people with features and hope-to-God we can address performance some day. Bottom line: Sloppy code === Sloppy code. Yeah, they could have some debugging features enables that could be tuned down - at least that was the hope back when we generated a GB of logs an hour.

Which of course translates to: "Don't even think about playing this game solo... its only for those wanting to join a corporation and be its slave or to recruit all your friends and try and make them slaves". Stupid premise. Hmmm... the above didn't get posted earlier. Trying again. The answer is "Wait for a wipe and a hopeful change in rules. That or become a corporate slave. Currently solo players are just fodder for the griefers."

Which of course translates to: "Don't even think about playing this game solo... its only for those wanting to join a corporation and be its slave or to recruit all your friends and try and make them slaves". Stupid premise.

The longer they go without doing something dramatic, the less faith I have they will turn this game around. Sad, it was fun for the first 3 years or so - until 0.23. Now we get partial implementation of patch releases and promises they will be looking at docking someday. I was hoping the JC change would bring NQ organizational approach changes, but that hope is fading fast.

RE: Warp - I'd actually like to see it go the other way. If I don't have enough warp cells to make a trip, let me warp part of the way there.

Lets not read too much into surface mining. They could simply reduce the time the operations takes and call it done. e.g. Change one parameter and call it fixed. "The reaction to changes introduced in 0.23 told us that there is more work needed here". Wow. Just Wow. Amazing that it took a huge drop in the player base to get them to realize this many months later. Guess voting with your dollars really does work. "we are particularly sensitive to making a fair move for players who have invested in buying them" So? No wipe? *sigh* Are they also going to be particularly sensitive to all the other exploits, mistakes, giveaways, etc. that have happened? Just wipe and level set the game after fixing schematics (like need to buy them once - once in your private database you can just clone them. Ideally, allow them to be researched or discovered and perhaps licensed. e.g. A Master schematic can be copied, a copy can only be used in one machine.)

Unfortunately, this is just stating the obvious. On the other hand, at least they are stating it, instead of trying to mask it in distractions. For instance, Manufacturing batches were clearly a change introduced to reduce operating cost, not as a player benefit. Most of us had no problem with the concept, but like many things, it was done without much thought. e.g. Nobody had issues with things that happened very rapidly, like making screws, being batched up into more reasonable periods of time; however applying that across the board resulted in some items taking days, and huge amounts of resources, to complete a batch. The savings for doing so on the longer term items was quite small, yet the impact to players making those items was huge.

Absolutely agree. In fact, submitted a formal Communication Plan to them over a year ago. Got the standard "We will push this up the chain" response.

NQ - Please confirm or deny. A full press release would go a long way... (what happened, who is doing what now, what changes are expected, impact to game (rollbacks to pre 0.23?), etc.

Its classic statistical manipulation. As my college stat teacher said: "Lies, Damm Lies, and Statistics". This is just like going to a Corvette club and asking "How many of you like Corvettes?". By forcing people into the game to do the survey, instead of in the launcher or on the forum with an e-mail link (best of the options in my opinion), they solicited those still playing and ask if they like the game - huge bias. Of course, as mentioned above, if they did it on the forum the results would likely be public - and that don't want that. They have the data - why not do a number of surveys focusing on people that played less than 10 hours, 10 to 100 hours, 100 to 1000 hours, 1000+ hours based on connect time of the account? THAT would be useful data.

Please see the poll. Select all that apply.

I fear its already too late. They are going to have to do something dramatic in order to get old players back... and I'm not talking about fixing emotes (their last priority patch).