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Pleione

Alpha Tester
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  1. Like
    Pleione reacted to CptLoRes in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    JC: I am making an unlimited persistent open-world MMO with user created content! Single shard of course!
    Players: That sounds almost to good to be true. How are you going to design for and address the obvious technical challenges for such a game?
    ..
    Players: Hello? Anyone there?
    ..
    ..
    JC: Don't worry guys! It is going to be great! You can even subscribe now if you want!
  2. Like
    Pleione reacted to blundertwink in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    I think it's both easy and fair to criticize them for whittling away what little content there was, but...for someone that claimed that DU would support "millions" of players, JC did not put one iota of thought into things like scalability or cost. 
     
    So yeah...NQ made the game shallow, but perhaps that's because it was built on a pile of sand by someone with no experience making scalable online software. 
     
    I still believe it was JC's own ego that ruined DU. He wanted to be the founder. The CEO. The Creative Director. He did not want a skilled CTO that might challenge his "design", so he promoted someone from within whose only other technical role was an internship...? 
     
    I could easily be very, very wrong....but my impression is he built a team that would do what he said and not challenge his lack of expertise in making software, driving away experienced vets (like Hrafnkell Oskarsson of Eve Online, who exited after less than a year).
     
    I think it's weird that some people are now insisting that the company would be better off if they "brought back JC", as if his loss was the reason so many things went awry. 
     
    In reality, I think the thing that went awry is those investors deciding it was okay for someone with no experience in gaming to lead a gaming company.
     
    That wouldn't have been a huge problem if it was a humble, open-minded leader that was able to understand their own lack of experience. 
     
    Honestly...and I'm sure some people will read this and think otherwise, but his perspectives on monopolies really showcases his slightly naive arrogance and inability to look beyond his own narrow, privileged world view. People like that rarely make good leaders. 
     
    Funny how the company he works for is now the "solution" to capitalism. Funny how the problem with monopolies has nothing to do with consumer choice, according to him...and blockchain magically fixes it. 
     
    This guy...is not much better than a con artist. This article is among the most silly, self-serving use cases shilling blockchain that I've seen in a long time. 
     
    This is exactly the way he approached DU, too...a bunch of baseless, lofty ideas (like this claim they made "cutting edge" tech that would support "millions of players") with no grounding in science whatsoever, ideas that crumbled with even the most basic scrutiny. 
  3. Like
    Pleione reacted to ADCOne in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    I am also still playing and my main gripe would be that I am playing to keep the taxes rolling on so I can one day make enough to buy ship parts to build more ship designs, which is what I like and have enjoyed doing in the game.
     
    However, The idea taxes are needed to limit what existing (active) players can do is not the way to go or think about it. If they implemented the suggested increasing taxes like mentioned above I think I might actually leave the game after that - I would almost certainly end most industry in game and I cannot keep up with demand on some things as is.
     
    The taxes only server one purpose and that is to ensure tiles are not taken up by inactive players (people not paying for the privilege). Its not ideal but you could not run (financially speaking) a game, as I understand it, without making sure only the paying customers take up the server load, so its not something they could do without. Also enabling prepaid taxes while limiting the amount of prepaid tax, ensures people who go on holiday etc. have a reasonable chance to come back to their tiles if they take a break from the sub, during the time away. While also ensuring people cannot lock tiles away for years on end due to prepaid taxes.
     
    Other than the above taxes server no purpose and are of no benefit to the players, as a result I see no reason the taxes need to be high or ever increasing or indeed anything that requires real effort on a players behalf to achieve, especially if you are not part of PVP, which I am not. I would not mind trying it but PVP is not what specifically brought me to this game, nor is it what keeps in the game, since I have not even tried PVP to date (many years have passed). 
     
    Also regarding the mining calibrations, doing them every week (some units more than once a week) is just a chore and while I do like the idea it takes more than one scan to fully calibrate a unit and that there is optional bonus ore for finding high calibration results. I do not like having to redo it all the time is not a good thing especially since its tied to the taxes anyway so that supersedes any reason for calibration loss. It just feels like something that forces players to login to the game, instead of actually play the game when they want to do so. In my opinion calibration loss could actually be removed from the game entirely since the real constraints on tile management is 'Gravity' or if you rather how much ore you ship can actually move at one time etc. To be clear there are only so many tiles one person can manage each week regardless (especially if you do not PVP so do not use warp).
     
    I realise that PVP does required everything as hard or challenging as possible so they all have to choose what resources to invest where etc. However, making all players go through PVP loops is a mistake in my opinion. It was like introducing different speed limits for ships instead of making it about acceleration to reach the speeds, completely PVP based but ignored the increased time to fly somewhere with a load so non PVP players were affected even when not going into PVP space.
     
    I guess I think all game mechanics even PVP related should not forget this is meant to be a game and therefore fun for all players, where people enjoy the things they choose to do in game, not simply ticket the PVP mechanics box so it becomes a set of chores, your doing each week instead.
     
    Addendum: Having given it some more thought the only reason I would accept mining unit calibration loss as a reasonable mechanic is once someone sub lapses. Thus giving the a small amount of time to remember to resub before there server use is stopped (via Mining units at least).
  4. Like
    Pleione reacted to CptLoRes in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    Anyone still playing DU is doing so despite NQ's best efforts to chase players away. The golden age for this game was in early alpha, and play ability and enjoyment has slowly been decreasing patch, by patch since then.
     
    Most (if not all) major updates released for this game has lead to decreased player numbers, with changes made against community advice because apparently "NQ knows best".
  5. Like
    Pleione reacted to Vazqez in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    A game that imposes restrictions on players has no point in existence.
    A game that forces players to perform a specific activity has no point.
     
    I'll expand on what's going on
     
    PVP should be an option, not a requirement. You yourself write that transport missions are boring and many hours were wasted. Think of a new player who flies for several hours only to be destroyed by a pirate thief. Such a person stops playing.
     
    Ship speed limits are another inexplicable limiter that has no basis in physics.
     
    Faulty or missing mechanics regarding the spawning of resources in fields.
     
    hese are the flaws that will contribute to the downfall of this game.
    And the PVP community was the only one that was listened to.
  6. Like
    Pleione reacted to blundertwink in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    There's still no news about a new update....the game is basically abandoned, as all evidence has pointed to for a while now. 
     
    Let's put this in context with some of the CEO's latest posts on LinkedIn. Consider this gem: 
     
    This is from a post about 3 weeks ago. 
     
    If anyone still believes that NQ is devoting resources to DU, please explain what those 80 people are doing day-to-day considering the last 8+ months of development velocity.
     
    The answer is very clear: they aren't working on DU, which we already knew because they've said their focus is on other projects and have said that for a while now. 
     
    Anyone that believes DU still has a real future is not interested in reality -- there's not one single piece of evidence to suggest that development is still going on at any real scale.
     
    There's not one piece of evidence to show player counts are doing anything other than plateauing at <100 players online concurrently. 
     
    You can keep pretending that the game is growing and that constant churns of new players is somehow a good thing, but all objective evidence says that even NQ is not interesting in furthering this moonshot. 
  7. Like
    Pleione reacted to blundertwink in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    The last patch announced was 1.4 back in...May?
     
    That the game is still online doesn't mean it has an actual future as an MMO...a dead MMO doesn't mean that it vanishes offline, it means there's no realistic hope for scaling it to be a real product. It could stay online for another decade, that doesn't mean it will ever be scaled out. 
     
    Let's also be real about just who is "ignoring 99% of feedback" -- that's how NQ has worked since the start. Maybe if they'd been more engaged years ago it would be different. This has been their reputation for nearly a decade now.
     
    That I'm reminding people not to bother isn't me being mean, it's pragmatic. 
     
    They've yet to even announce another patch afaik...the idea that they'd make huge sweeping changes at this point is not grounded on anything other than weirdly placed hope in the ~50-100 people that play in a given day. 🤷‍♂️ 
     
    NQ has been clear that their focus is other projects, I just don't understand why people don't understand this and keep thinking they can magically turn this around.
     
    I think people vastly, vastly, vastly underestimate how much retooling would be needing to make any of these suggestions practical, and that requires money that no sane company would spend for a product that hasn't scaled. 
  8. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from JohnNoGoodman in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    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.
  9. Like
    Pleione reacted to blundertwink in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    The very idea that Dual Universe is going to last another 12 months is puzzling to me...
     
    There's no reason to actually believe that other than hope, which is fine I guess...but let's not pretend that NQ is scaling up their dev efforts and that they merely need to catch up. 
     
    Their CEO has been clear that his priority has been (for a long time now) adapting the underlying tech to new products.
     
    You know...products that actually have a chance of commercial success, at least in their eyes. 
     
    DU isn't such a product, and that ought to be rather clear by now. Bad reviews, flagging pops, and clearly a mountain of tech debt such that changes are glacially slow. 
     
    This isn't merely a staffing issue where devs need time to get up to speed -- why would anyone believe that NQ will onboard new devs to a product their own CEO describes as a "moonshot"...? There's no evidence of that, regardless.
     
    I keep saying it because people want to pretend otherwise: NQ's development priority is not Dual Universe.
     
    If you think that their pace will magically improve even as the company's leader is clearly saying "we're focused on other things"...that's just fantasy to me. 
  10. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from Jinxed in TRY THE GAME FOR FREE ON STEAM - discussion thread   
    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.
  11. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from Jinxed in The power of a name... if "Schematics" were just called...   
    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.
  12. Like
    Pleione reacted to blundertwink in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    In my opinion, you're wrongly conflating your personal experience with public perception. Also, 3 update cycles to fix bugs is hardly good when their typical release cadence is 1 update every 2 months...
     
    The only evidence that matters is the pace and content of updates.
     
    If you're saying 1.1 and 1.2 offered a lot of content and fixed a ton of bugs...well, I wouldn't agree with this claim that the game is more stable or feature-rich...and player demographics would suggest that no one else buys this, either.
     
    4 months is a long time for a sub-based game, especially when DU was supposed to still be riding a huge wave of popularity post-release.
     
    This is the only way sub-based games work...the first few months are supposed to be the zenith, but DU barely made a splash and has since only lost players. 
     
    DU's development is slow compared to any other sub-based MMO -- they haven't given the game stability or feature depth, there's no evidence they will ever do so, and the vast majority of people that try the game see the same thing. 
     
    It's fine if you like the game, but insisting that DU's development pace is actually fine after so little has changed in 4 months is baffling and misunderstand how this whole genre works. 
  13. Like
    Pleione reacted to blundertwink in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    Which is kind of my point..."the bulk of the players" represents a tiny, tiny segment of gamers mostly limited to people that have played since alpha or beta.
     
    There's should be no illusion that DU's largest distribution platform by far is Steam, not organic growth from its own launcher. 
     
    I'm glad that you like the game, honestly. There are things to like without a doubt...but it's a subscription MMO.
     
    A few gamers liking it isn't enough.
     
    The dismal loss of players on Steam and the lack of apparent organic growth anywhere else is why I don't have faith that NQ will figure out how to make the game popular. 
     
    It isn't enough to like the game or even to think the game is good, the game has to be popular for it to survive as a sub-based MMO. 
  14. Like
    Pleione reacted to Dixiii in Talemai is solid proof that ore distribution with infinite ore pools that can be claimed is terrible for game   
    Old SWG mining model was much better. Ore deposits had similar distribution (big medium and small spots), also need to be scanned, but was temporary and respawned after being mined out or in several days.
    Something similar, modified closer to DU mechanics should work better. Because current resource mining on tiles is very boring. You either have some good tiles and do boring calibrations weekly, and have no idea what to do with all Quanta you gain. Or have almost no chance to claim any good tiles since they all taken.
     
    Same and worse problem with T5 alien resources. The only big PvP guild easily denied everyone's access to everything in T5, warp beacons included. This does not looks healthy for the game. There is no competition, nor any pvp activity or conflicts. One guild has it all. Rest of game audience have to play without tier 5 at all. Does not looks as a good game design.
  15. Like
    Pleione reacted to Sethioz in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    more LAGGG :(( i really love the game concept, but you guys really gotta fix the lag. i can play ALL major games in 60fps 1440p or even 4k, such as forza horizon 5, dying light 2, resident evil village ..etc, but DU lags all the time even in 1080p. please focus on fixing performance issues before working on anything else, it would be so great to play this game in 60fps. for example add more graphics options to play around with, why can't i change shadow resolution and distance like in other games? or reflections? those are the main FPS eaters in any game.
     
    DU has very basic graphics, similar to planetside 2, which i can run in native 4k maxed out in 60fps, no issues! also as far as i know, DU has been in development for about 8 years, so for 8 year old game it should run like a dream on a PC that can run 2020 - 2022 games in 1440p.
  16. Like
    Pleione reacted to kulkija in T1 fuel market effect opinions.   
    This!
  17. Like
    Pleione reacted to Novean-61657 in T1 fuel market effect opinions.   
    They threw out fun half way through beta, with the rest of the bathwater...
     
    Sometimes I wonder if NQ is fine with DU not being fun, but just being an addiction...
  18. Like
    Pleione reacted to CptLoRes in Talemai is solid proof that ore distribution with infinite ore pools that can be claimed is terrible for game   
    I don't care if the information was leaked or not.
     
    Because the real problem here is being able to completely control a number of limited finite resources in a MMO, and then being able to hold them indefinitely. That is just bad design.
     
    And being able to it in 24h or less is ridiculously bad design..
     
    So thank <entity> we had this long beta before release, where NQ worked actively with the community to get all the kinks out.
  19. Like
    Pleione reacted to CptLoRes in Talemai is solid proof that ore distribution with infinite ore pools that can be claimed is terrible for game   
    The (closed NDA) forum had good vibes for about a year or two. But by then is was already starting to be clear how NQ operated, and things started to change quickly..
  20. Like
    Pleione reacted to Wyndle in Talemai is solid proof that ore distribution with infinite ore pools that can be claimed is terrible for game   
    The issue isn't that we know there will be more planets coming online that we can prep for.  The issue is that a select few likely had a release date weeks in advance to organize and stage assets.  The issue is that NQ has been caught repeatedly giving a game breaking advantage to a select few in a game where resource scarcity is a feature.  The issue is that NQ released ONE planet despite it being plain to see that doing so would further advantage those who have already been advantaged even without insider info.
     
    I saw at least three people on the forums discussing these types of things prior to 1.1 (down from a dozen a year ago for similar circumstances).  If us whiners in the forums can see a problem with it then NQ cannot feign ignorance of the consequences of releasing one planet.  The right-click recycling killed my optimism for the collective dev skill of NQ.  Releasing one planet in an already imbalanced PvP focused game cannot be explained away in any manner favorable to NQ.  It is completely unacceptable and moved me from neutral but skeptical to seeing a clear and demonstrable pattern of gaslighting and abuse.
  21. Like
    Pleione reacted to Rokkur in Talemai is solid proof that ore distribution with infinite ore pools that can be claimed is terrible for game   
    @Msoul Respectfully again, I don't misunderstand as you believe I do. You seem to think my response is a lack of understanding, it is not.
    I acknowledge your view points and also want to express why posts are made in the nature they are.

    As Jinx pointed out, many used to be more constructive at one point until the felt unheard. In order to play DU the game almost requires the player to treat it as a second job. Because of the level of investment, there is an emotional feeling of player ownership of DU by the community despite what is stated in the legalize of NQ claiming omnipotent rights to even our creative works.

    You seem to also believe that the communication breakdown is off topic of the OP's post but it is not.

    It is NQ's ATTITUDE towards its community in communication is also very matching of how it approaches development, and thus the results are like dropping barrels of gunpowder into a volcano. The reason things aren't louder and more explosive is persistent dwindling of the player base. NQ thinks the lava is bad and continues to try to drain it(remove/drive away players), but the lava is the heart of the volcano, the same as the community is the heart of the game. If the lava/fire (community/passion) dies, the volcano (game) also dies.

    The fact that another planet was added with the same distribution problems expressed is why we believe we aren't being heard. Just as you believe I would have wrote something different if I understood what you said, we as the players believe Ore Distribution would have changed if NQ was listening to us.

    @Msoul - I also want to say I think while well intended, your attempt to fill in NQ's gap is getting the fire directed onto you, when really we are frustrated with NQs dev decisions, something you are powerless to do anything about.
     
  22. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from Kezzle in Ore Availability and Distribution   
    I could forget and forgive this in Alpha, but it absolutely should have been straightened out in Beta.  That is just another sign we are really in Alpha 3 now...
  23. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from Jinxed in Ore Availability and Distribution   
    By now you must realize most of the gameplay tables had at most one meeting to discuss.  Materials... transfer times... all feel like someone was given an afternoon to code the entire table - just placeholders you see - we will put in real values before launch...  What worse is they have added layers of code to "fix" things that are not correct in the tables, instead of just fixing the tables.  (Ref:  industry batch sizes which are suppose to take a minimum of 3 minutes to avoid excess CPU usage.  So now there are batches of batches and weirdness like being told your out of schematics when you still have 4 left.  Yet today I found a transfer unit running on a 22 second cycles - opps, forgot to layer that code onto transfer units too!  In the meantime, quick hacks have resulted in some items taking 41 minute to transfer but only 47 minutes to build (ex. numbers but close))
  24. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from Dakanmer in UPDATE 1.2 ARRIVES ON DECEMBER 13TH - TACTICAL MAP, REVAMPED ASTEROIDS AND MORE   
    Yeah... stay 30 minutes after spending 4-6 hours finding the rock.  That was NOT a reward, it was Ganker fodder design.
     
    Personally I'm thrilled they have recognized Solo players exist.  Can't recall the last time over the past 5 years when they have tried to balance for us a bit.  Maybe because they never really did?
  25. Like
    Pleione got a reaction from Nick__1 in UPDATE 1.2 ARRIVES ON DECEMBER 13TH - TACTICAL MAP, REVAMPED ASTEROIDS AND MORE   
    Yeah... stay 30 minutes after spending 4-6 hours finding the rock.  That was NOT a reward, it was Ganker fodder design.
     
    Personally I'm thrilled they have recognized Solo players exist.  Can't recall the last time over the past 5 years when they have tried to balance for us a bit.  Maybe because they never really did?
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