Pleione

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).

Exactly my point: We had an ARKSHIP! One that lasted 10,000 years to deliver us. Think of the technology required to build that. We have NOTHING (at least that I can think of) that mankind has ever built that lasted 10,000 years - not even the pyramids (which are about 4000 years old and built of friggen stone). The bloody whole thing is supported by a beam of light! Obviously the tech used is far an above beyond what we have today.

I'm an alpha player that started in January of 2018 with thousands of hours in the game, hell, probably approaching a thousand hours since pre-beta. I would welcome a wipe IF: 1) The game came back with ZERO bots allowing for the promised player based economy to actually be a player based economy 2) Schematics were seriously reworked. I fine with having to buy, oh, say, Tier 3 and above schematics - once. Not once for every warp cell factory. 3) They get back to a lore based architecture: A) Stupid not being able to duplicate, at low cost, a schematic for ones own use 10,000 years into our future. B ) Rockets? Really? How about fusion jets (aka FireFly) 4) Massive reduction is skillcounts. It should take 6 years of game play to master industrial skills or months to master iron processing just to have to start over to do aluminum. e.g. Let the sandbox be a sandbox again. OK with concepts like "Tier 1 mining", but not 5 Tier 1 mining skills. 5) Removal of luck based windfalls - keep the playing field level. 6) Total revamp of PVP. Stupid that an XS ship can dead-stop in front of a moving L ship and destroy the L ship while taking no damage. That was perfectly acceptable in Alpha, as a placeholder, not in Beta. Alas, I fear none of those things will come to pass.

I resemble that remark, except I'm infrastructure wealthy, cash poor - and now crushed. I found the playability reasonable for the past 3 years, this patch pushed me well past the level of grind I'm comfortable with. I'm an industrialist by choice, miner by need. I currently have over 3 years of skills in the queue and would have more but got bored adding them. I just can't see waiting 3-5 years for my skills to get to level 5 in the industrial chain and having to grind that long just for schematics to reactivate what I had. Guess it just comes down to Heinlein's "Specialization is for insects" (look it up if your not familiar with the full quote)

I'm pretty sure 0.23 was a mortal blow for the game. I worked hard (12+ hours a day for 3+ months) to get to the point of being able to build a Warp Beacon. Towards the end, it was a real drag - basically spending the entire day doing 15 minute scans in hopes of finding a single vein of T5 Niobium ore, knowing it takes several veins to make the alloys required (plus all the T1->T4 ores). Still, I did it, since my goal was in sight. I've gone from the 4 yard line to the 99.5 yard line now - the game didn't nudge me to something a bit harder, it tackled and plowed my head into the ground and claimed "Gee that was fun, get up and lets do it again, and again, and again". I can't understand the lore (and yeah, lore is important) behind not being able to duplicate schematics some 10,000 years into our future. In fact, with industries so relatively cheap, not sure why each has a schematic box. Each industry can only run one thing at a time. There is no LUA code that would allow cycling between them, and even if there were, the 10 input links would severely limit that usefulness. Suspect I'm going to have to hear something like 0.25 will be both a wipe and bot free to bother to come back. I've been logging in daily for the bonus, but the impulse to do that is fading quickly as well. Have we seen any of the rollbacks promised yet, beyond the income change and schematic price change? If so, I missed the announcement of the damage change rollback and the like, much less any compensation for cores blown post 0.23.

And if they want us to use the markets, don't make them a pain too: I just took 3 large cargo containers full of extra "stuff" I had to the marketplace. Something like 50 different items. Because they allow people to post a price of 10,000,000 for a 1000 quanta item, the "average price" can be way skewed. Perhaps they consider that another acceptable exploit... but I wasn't going to spend 2 days looking up prices for each and every item I had to sell. Also curious how it establishes a price when the item isn't available anywhere in the market? Anyhow, they need to put safety limits in on prices to... you know... HELP people. (FYI - I used the interface that pops up when you drop something in the marketplace container.) Maybe I'm just spoiled by marketplaces like BDO has...

And ED may become boring to me as well, after I do some game exploration... the point was I was VERY dedicated to DU, and no longer am. My factories will be consolidated to my space station with excess sold on the market at going prices.

Schematics mean there is little point to having more than one factory. Perhaps that is their goal... saving server cost on their side by reducing the number of factories. If so its working... I've stripped one factory down to the ground and if I feel like risking my L core ship, may go strip another. So good nudge NQ. btw - 0.23 also caused me to re-evaluate if DU is the game I wanted to focus on (after 3ish years of playing). It caused me to look around... and I found ED. A few hours there and the luster of DU quickly tarnishes.

And that is exactly the problem. I don't want to be an org slave. I don't want to become the worlds best Advanced LED manufacturer. I do find exploring ED's 400 Billion stars to be a draw vs. the dozen'ish planets in DU. Lets look at a bit of what was promised in the original roadmap (JC YouTube, August 8th, 2018): Alpha 1 (Nov 2018): Craft your components: produce the interactive components you need for your bases and ships. Today: Specialize and make a few components. Alpha 2 (1H19): Become an industrialist: setup factories to mass produce vehicles for you, your friends or sell them on the market. Today: Specialize and make a few components. Note the 1st person in the original description. Not "Join and org and...". Alpha 2 (1H19): Set-up your own markets and trading centers, become a mogul and build a trade empire. Today: Economy feature for Release in 2021 along with Economy Specialization at Release. Original feature pushed to Post Release. Beta (1H20): Galaxy: reach for the stars, discover and explore new solar systems. Today: Post Release - enjoy some new planets we will release sometime in the future. All planets will be a hybrid of hand customized (for beauty) and proceeduralized (for bulk). Hand customization means discovery will only be those those planets NQ releases. No galaxy, no 400 Billion Stars - just a few dozen planets as time permits. Others have called it as I see it: The game is evolving from a sandbox to a micromanaged economy simulator, and in so doing, is losing the interest of a lot of its original backers. Add to that a horrible Customer Service experience (never good, worse since Beta release), lack of communication from NQ (although they repeatedly have promised to do better), information leaks, failure to fix basic bugs/game stability, shutting down API's that allowed us to see actual player counts, refusal to wipe and level set, half-baked undos of patches that primarily benefit the orgs, etc. and its just been too much. Now with the streamers disappearing (a very bad sign), it just feels like this potentially great game is in a death spiral. The game needs STRONG leadership, the type of strength that shows vision, the willingness to admit errors and LISTEN to the player base, to go forward with transparency, to acknowledged fixing things is simply counter-productive (think about all the cores that have been replaced due to 0.23, then a week later no longer needing to be replaced - it could take them weeks to analyze logs and give them back, presuming such players had space available, doing something else if not (e.g. all the problems that people exploited or were victims off)) and wiping instead, and an understanding that original direction promised in the early days is what got them the funding they have - changing the game direction is probably not in their best interest. I continue to watch (play a little) and unfortunately continue to be disappointed.

Dream on. I've been playing since January of 2018 and am seriously considering moving on. I'm just waiting to see how long it takes for these recent promises to actually happen, and if they do more than just a surface change (like do the damage counters get reset? Will we be reimbursed for core's we have had to replace? etc.) Personally I'm also watching the bug report system: JC indicated they were about caught up. I've submitted major bugs, with logs, like the 10GB memory leak per km when running on Madis back on the 11th and haven't received any non-automated feedback yet, nor seen a client patch come out. The longer it takes, the more disenchanted I'm becoming.

Emphasis on (Currrently pending approval). Blazemonger - please let us know here when its approved so we can upvote it.

Mods: Please move this to the general discussion thread.

I'm finding the PVP aspect extremely limiting to my PVE ship. If I build a ship JUST for safe space its built out of carbon nanofibre (looks good, makes RL sense) and basically consist of engines , moderate fuel tanks, and cargo bays, as expected. If I want to factor in surviving being ganked in most of the solar system I have to: 1) Build from steel (adds mass: e.g. More engines, more fuel, both of which add more mass) 2) Build a gold cage around my core and pilot set (adds mass) 3) Equip with decent weapons just so that the ship LOOKS like it might fight back (adds mass, huge expense, and if I want to actually defend, a huge number of talent points) 4) Invest in an entire tree of talent points to boost the HP of my ship 5) Wrap cargo containers and other critical items in air-gapped shielding (adds mass, seriously increases frontal cross-section, meaning more wings, more engines, more fuel, etc.) 6) Somehow design this massive beast so that I can go from 0 to 29999 within the safe zone of a planet, and stop in that same range. or A) Add a warp drive (only available mid-game) and buy warp cores (can't afford, and with 0.23 can't make until end-game) B ) Never EVER make a mistake like going to the bathroom when approaching a planet and overshoot the safe zone PVE's need a defensive option: Something like radar jamming which decreases a PVPers range by 90% (perhaps skill based) I want to get back to building slick looking ships, not having to build a tank to survive.

For the record: I'm a solo player not in any Megacorp. I do have a few hundred industry factory on a large space station, along with a 150 or so transfer units, storage containers, etc. I don't know of anyone capable of going from start to 1000 industries in a month - I've played 6-12 hours a day (up until the last week or two) since pre-beta in order to accomplish what I have - so well over 3 months.

Please consider rolling back the 0.23 features or this game is going to die. 1) Economy is completely busted, with megacorps already making warp cells while normal players are still struggling with making scrap. 2) Ships are now glass. Get damaged most anyway (maneuver tool, lag, mushroom platforms at warp points, or just plain crashing) and you risk losing your core - But you can't afford to replace it. 3) It now cost to make BPs of your own ship?!?!? 4) Massive memory leak - running 2km along the surface of Madis will drive the games memory usage from 6gb to 18gb. Really? Nobody tested such basics before release? 5) Broken Customer Service. Goal should be to answer most tickets within a few hours, and 95% within 24 hours. Re-enable your Discord GMs to fix things until you reach that goal and staff Discord humanly. 6) Focus on making the game a pleasant experience, not a game of dodging bugs and grueling grind. Why don't we have basic queue management capabilities? You know... really basic things like "move to top"? 7) Set and publish basic goals. e.g. It should take about 100 hours of game play to design and build an XS space craft and be able to leave Alioth. It should take 1000 hours of game play to be able to build a large core space station (half a man year of effort), etc. 8) Stop punishing progress. If people are reaching your definition of "end game" faster than you like, don't throw up road blocks, add more game experience opportunities. e.g. Additional planets, stargates, perhaps schematic research opportunities 9) Realize your "big release" followed by "massive bugs" approach is archaic. Adopt a modern sprint based approach. Perhaps add one feature or change every couple of weeks, make sure it works and behaves as you expected, fix if not, then repeat. 10) FIX ANCIENT BUGS. We don't care if your developers only want to work on new features, your need a full time bug fixing team. Don't allow developers to create new content until their old content works as expected. 11) Adopt a code development methodology that allows for regression testing - and actually use it. 12) Specialization is for Insects (Robert Heinlein https://www.elise.com/quotes/heinlein_-_specialization_is_for_insects) People love a game where "You can do whatever you want". Nobody has a life goal of playing a game for a 1000 hours to become the galaxies best Advanced LED manufacturer (just to have a megacorp run them out of business by selling Advanced LEDs at below cost until the expert leaves). Specialization should be along the lines of "I want to be a fighter pilot", "I want to be an industrialist", "I want to be an explorer", or even "I hate knitting, so can I just mine a few hours a week?" You are massively bleeding players right now. Declare a Mea culpa, rollback most if not all of 0.23, and rethink the whole game balance approach. Fix all exploits, make the game mechanics less painful (respecting players time), and consider a total wipe (perhaps preserving Talent Points and blueprints) to give everyone a chance again, then roll out a player based economy with ZERO bots and an economy designed to re-establish civilization.

Maybe JC is just really an environmentalist: Make creating parts REALLY hard so that people spend all their time searching for wrecks to recover parts from? Lore would need to be dammed though. We just got here after 10,000 years of travel in civilizations most advance ships. Where did the ancient wrecks come from?

I have to give them a little credit: New request tagged NQ for things like teleports are responded to within a few hours.

Bugs are my biggie. Today I reconnected to continue doing some territory scanning and the ship felt "funny". Realized I didn't have a gyro displayed. Log out and back in and it reappeared. If I had been moving fast, that likely would not have ended well. Squash the bugs, make the game stable, then wean us off our crutches.

1) Would like to hear some comment around dedication to fixing existing basic bugs - like industries being broke and crashes (e.g. "Game stabilization") being prioritized over new features. 2) Some update on the disastrous ZenDesk ticket system would be good too. I received a form letter reply a few days ago on a bug report ticket that was TEN WEEKS old (November 23rd for a ticket filed on September 8th) - the "sorry for the late response" line is just insulting at this point. Got a follow-up on December 3rd assuring me my Alpha blueprint issue was very important and a request to please not delete the blueprint... In December, for an issue reported in the first weeks of Beta. 3) Logic around PVP and slowboats - those ships created by newer players without the warp drives. Specifically if they can no longer logout to stop, they are going to need to start decelerating 10-30 SU from a planet, making them nice slow, fat, targets for any ganker. Is the vision that cargo ONLY be transported by warp capable ships? Or that all cargo captains functionally have to be members of large orgs and have escort ships?

That would be true if most PVP in DU was fighter-vs-fighter, as it was when there was a remote PVP area. Today its "Lets gank defenseless ships and get great rewards for little effort". Not sporting. The core based targeting is primarily at fault here. There is no defense for a L core ship against XS core ships due to the core size based targeting (beyond warping - which is not available for most new players). Many, MANY, recommendations have been made on how to fix this, and some progress has been announced, but not delivered yet. Instead they launching things like this recent Gold Star search.

Your not alone. I have my Large cargo ship, my Large Space station pumping out anything I want to make... down to tweaking the ship, tweaking the station, and stockpiling ores and intermediate products. Scanning for t5s is boring, but about the only thing I have to do... I do wish they would focus on fixing bugs instead of new unexpected things like this Gold Star event they posted this morning.

Your nature, not mine. Not a lot of people, excepting mostly monotheist. Kill to defend? Sure, if absolutely necessary. Kill for food - that is the nature of life. Kill for fun? No, not by a longshot. Sad to be you.

Can I ask why you assume MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER means PVP? Lore wise it makes ZERO sense - we just spent ~10,000 years to get to a new solar system and the first and most important thing we do is figure out how to kill each other? Some of us hope for a better, peaceful, future...