Pleione

If only they added things... instead every major change was designed to lighten their server load. That was Goal 1, with "substitute" game play instead.

I remember during alpha server restarts that results in login queues in the THOUSANDS (a stat they eventually removed). Those days are long gone. Early alpha (seem to recall pre-alpha) devs actually interacted with players a bit - not real time, but would comment about constructs, question how players accomplished things, etc. Those were the "good ole days".

Your being optimistic...

It was a great advert, but like most advertisements, fails to mention the flaws that are keeping people away. Its my opinion the tax system is the most constraining. When me and my playing partner left we were spending 6 days a week, 4+ hours a day, earning the in-game cash needed to pay the taxes on our infrastructure. That left us 1 day a week (about 14% of our playing time) to explore near items and actually PLAY. It just wasn't worth it. FWIW I consider both property taxes and the schematic fees "taxes", since they serve no purpose other than to slow players down and constrain them. Lack of deliverance of some features - like player owned markets that have been long promised, didn't help. Of course, I laughed out loud on the "Explore new planets" - we had more of those in Alpha and Beta than exist in production. But that concept died when they abandoned procedurally created planets; not that they had a database which could have handled those.

Yep. Personally played pre-alpha and was thinking this was the game for me for the next decade. Then patch by patch they reduced it to the current state, with things accelerating after V0.23 (as previously mentioned).

In general I agree with the Op, but the analogy is weak. Paintball fields representing an infinitesimally small percentage of places one could stumble into, and are often fenced in to prevent such stumbling. Personally, had that been the approach for PVP, I would have been fine with it.

Hunt for The Golden Goober. Note the 3rd definition you silly Frenchman. Is SO describes what DU has devolved to. goober goo͞′bər noun A yokel; a bumpkin. A foolish or silly person. A gob of phlegm. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

I think this song sums it up pretty well:

I concur. I was one of the pre-alpha players that took time off work for the 3-4 day play periods per month of the early Dual Universe. Logged 72 hours in one of those 96 hour periods once. I remember login queues of 2500+ people. Sad to say but those were the best days of Dual Universe. Too many time NQ tried to sell "Performance Improvements" that were nothing but efforts to reduce resource consumption due to bad initial design. To compound that, their fix was often poorly implemented.

What is the community reaction to Novaquark's CEO (Nouredine Abboud) stating on Linked-In: "And Novaquark has pushed the idea of Dual Universe as far as possible, with a bold shot at building a persistent MMO built by the players with next generation voxels and a single shard server tech."

So long, fair well... My org decided today to shutter its doors - will spend the next week or so HQing everything we can, and hauling all the good stuff, like Rare Mining Units, either to Haven or our space stations. Its been interesting, but its just drudgery now. Will be watching for the next year or so to see if they turn things around and give us the game they promissed.

Actually elected to compromise: I'm going to play when I feel like it, with total disregard for 24 hour calibration cycles. Yeah, I won't make as much profit, but hopefully it will start feeling like a game instead of a job. Maybe I'll play daily, maybe I won't, but I won't feel guilty if I skip a day or three.

Honestly, I wish they would just pull the plug. Then I could quit playing guilt free. Now I'm in a small group and play to support them, but its really feeling like duty now, not fun.

Really? I can't remember any such post since launch, and they were far and few between (the occasional "We are reading and working hard" but nothing meaningful) before that. Excepting patch notes of course. I'm working with another game that has a total of 5 devs, plus support staff, that is moving much quicker - and they talk to us on Discord, often DM us to make sure we are ok, etc. And they appear to be happy to do so. We hear about the trials and tribulations of their current efforts, they send out meaningful, neutral, surveys (not marketing ones), and remind us they are human and take weekends off. The environment is SO much better. Because of it, the test base is friendly and non-corrosive. Testers help by voting on the bugs they want to see squished first, and they actively solicited suggestions, also open for voting. The environment is SO much better. Because of it, the test base is friendly and non-corrosive. Oh, and despite being pre-alpha, they have more online players than DU... As a result, my 12 hour a day addiction to DU is down to a few hours a day - mostly calibration mining a few dozen MUs in order the pay taxes on our 24 territories. I'd never consider spending another dime on DU, mostly because the devs don't give us any meaningful clue about if there will even be a tomorrow. Like the last roadmap was published in December of 2019??? Over THREE YEARS ago? In fact, I commented today to my last remaining org mate that I'm actually rather pleased - for awhile I didn't think DU would make it to 2023. About the "DU is live - join us on Twitch?" No major news, just an hour or so of looking at player constructs. (Plus 30 minutes of "Hello xyz!") Bleh.

Pre-0.23 there was a very shiny chrome honeycomb. So shiny if you built a platform and looked down, you would see stars at night. Does that still exist? So far everything I've tried has been dulled down.

I'm definitely not extending my 4th alt - the one I created using Steam at launch. One other I'm funding with DACs, along with my main. Have 2 I subscribed for 13 months. Basically its become a chore but I log in daily to run my T2 & T3 calibration runs, and every 5-6 days for the T1 Sanctuary/Haven runs. Keeping my factory fed with schematics, and spending any extra cash on Warp Cell schematics. So probably average 2 hours a day, down from 14.

What's really sad is that I'm playing another pre-pre-alpha game (less than 500 invited) and we average 250ish people online at any time. The devs chat with us constantly, bug reports are acknowledged within a day, typically with a heartfelt "Thank you", suggestions are being implemented routinely, and acknowledged with thanks, they have a public bug tracking and public suggestion tracking system, and the team is a fraction of the size of Novaquark.

What in the blazes would an exit strategy be? Buy DACs on the long shot and leave. That's about as complicated as I can see it. Short version: just leave.

That because, once long-long ago, you could have industries on dynamic constructs. It was an early goal of mine, before they eliminated that and the turned "Galaxy" into perhaps adding another solar system, of having a Stargate Universe class ship that could explore the universe and over a period of a month or five, pop out a stargate and then do it again.

Agree completely. Lack of lore - a consistent believable story/concept line - is a major problem throughout the game. Starts with "We are the last remnants of humanity, so lets establish a new civilization with the goal of killing each other" and goes downhill from there.

... "Maintenance Units" with a description of "Various lubricants and other wearable parts used to produce a product", I suspect people would have bought into it with little complaint. OK, OK, the implementation is currently tedious, and could be improved, but the concept would have been acceptable.

I think they know they would never survive another wipe... ... with maybe one exception: A wipe after a 2 year shutdown to retool the game, with subscriptions being put in suspended animation, and generous bonuses to all who come back.

That would be the case if playing DU was a requirement of life. Its not. Much more likely people will just get frustrated and leave.

"Faith" is what it takes, there surely is no evidence they are doing either. Many of us love the game, and continue to play, but do not share your faith. We are just stubborn and choose to believe "Its not dead - yet."

Right now I'd be happy if they just backed off the "fix" for the "rare" mining unit issue. The issue was real, hit it a half-dozen times since launch and dutifully reported completed with log files. Post 1.2.3 and the "fix" it is happening to about 1 in 5 of my calibration efforts. Ballpark. My org members are talking like this is the last straw... the huge bump in frequency was reported in hours on Discord and via ticket. No excuse for why they have not backed it off - beyond them simply not caring. Or so it feels.