Pleione

looks like the devs believe they’re stuck with schematics, hopefully someone with a publisher mindset changes their mind. 

So I'm not too sure why there continues to be a push to increase the graphics in game.  First of all, they are beautiful.  Top notch.  Second of all, has anyone ever said, "Man, DU has so much to do, and I really love it, but this texture mapping has me wanting to quit." Or, "Man, DU seems like a lot of fun, at a really good price, but until they improve the 3D models, I'm not buying it"?  Every hour spent by an employee working on increasing the graphics instead of adding additional content is an absolute waste, and will do nothing to improve the player experience, or player numbers.

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.)

And all of this to be completed by the end of the year?
Why is NQ not coming clean and out by making it clear that release of the game will be pushed out
 
There is a lot in this blogpost that could be good, also a lot that could not. It's a lot of "working on, planning, looking at, considering, might, may". Where is the actual roadmap update that frankly is clearly needed as from this blogpost one can easily deduct that most of what is still to be done is not even in implementation stages yet and still on the drawing board if not in the conceptualize stage leading in to that stage.
 
Based on this blogpost, a release ready game is at least 18 months away, probably longer.
 
 
Also, IMO too much here seems to imply NQ is looking to make the game "more accessible" for new players. I am not sure how that is even needed. Why should surface gathering yield even more resources? and why do I get the feeling that NQ is actually trying to find a way to roll back schematics and "reimburse" those who bought them instead of designing and creating gameplay solutions that will allow _players_ to find and create schematics which can then be researched, enhanced, copied and brought to market.
 
for most of the mentioned mechanics there is no change or even a signal of progression in the concept of these from what was shared in December. Why is NQ rather clear in part 2 that they need to fix the back end and the core of their technology and then in part 3 just goes back to their usual spin on all the kewl things that are coming.
 
Overall, these three blogposts have not told us anything we did not yet know outside of maybe giving more clear signals that NQ is very, very far away from getting close to a game that could be released.
 
The actual value of these posts is minimal at best. It's fluff and filler. While I get that currently the company has other things to get sorted, why not communicate that more clearly and create time for yourself to make that happen. This just feels like it's mostly ignoring the reality of what NQ is going through which unfortunately is more of the same.
 
 

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.

english

french
 
there is your official signing that JC is gone

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

I'm in your same age bracket, and have also put in 1000s of hours (During some 4 day alpha test, over 60 hours in that one test period (followed by a coma sleep period)).  Been doing that whenever it was available for test periods throughout alpha and early beta for close to 3 years now.  Life as a retiree has its advantages!
 
I'm a diehard solo  jack-of-all-trades PVE player that competes well with many organizations due to focus and time invested.  I have my mega factory on a Large space core and was only a few days away from my Warp Beacon starting.  Rather perturbed that schematics were dropped on us with little notice (unless you were ATV).  If I'm understanding correctly, its likely going to cost me a small fortune for a warp beacon schematic, presuming I finally find a marketplace that sells them, after risking PVP gankers since I'll be forced into PVP space to find that schematic.  The 2 days notice means I may well have to spend months before I can now start my Warp Beacon construction.  I'll go check things out, but if this prediction is true, I'll probably leave, perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever - life is simply too short to grind endlessly when the apparent justification for this boils down to NQ needing to reduce load on its infrastructure.  The alternative, optimizing code or rewriting it using a better algorithm apparently is beyond NQs capabilities.
 
Very disappointed JC! 

I fear the delay in 0.23 promised rollbacks "adjustments" is going to cost NQ dearly going forward.  I was logging in daily just to get the reward, but have stopped doing that as well - just can't hold my breath anymore.  Others previously active players I still discord with are bascially in the DU?  D-what? camp now, having moved on to other games.
 
The last meaningful (barely) Release Notes were from December 18th,  over two week ago (ignoring 1R0.23.7 which fixed emotes - that being so critical to gameplay).  This is making many of us agree with Rhotan and Blazemonger when they claim you may have heard, but you didn't listen.
 
Please prove us wrong.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

You are totally correct, I spent a lot of time wasted running around when I coud have just made the M. Total newb mistake.  I see where got lost on this now and appreciate you pointing it out.
 
I have one suggestion, I know that you can filter out nanocrafter only parts but it would be "nice" if nanocrafter was listed in the "CRAFTABLE IN:" list as one of the options. 

@Armaden - you can make most of the basic Tier 1 goods in your nanopack.  It is sufficient to build the Medium assemblers you talked about, although it makes parts at half the speed of a real industry.  Because of that speed difference, in pre-schematic days, many would start by nanopacking refiners, then smelters, then electronics and metalsworks, then assemblers - a fairly basic progression that made sense.

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.

100% This. It is ruined. I've posted several times on the forums this week that it's price fixing and that's illegal in the real world for a reason. There's no need for bots in the market place and they need to be removed for the market to find its true equilibrium, supply and demand profile. Bots and price fixing are not allowing industry to breathe in the way that it was intended.

A welcome start but actually not the root of the industry issues.
 
The reason why people are being seen to 'solo' or 'self sufficient' is that the fundamental backbone of the markets is broken, absolutely broken and removing the desire to collaborate. The reason? Bots.
 
Bots are placing buy items in the market place and poisonings the market flow down. To make it worse, its being done at the source with ore which is amazingly overvalued. Ore is key as its the starting block of the supply chain and an artificial high in value then creates no desire for anyone to refine, create and then sell their items into the supply chain. Generating a real supply and demand equilibrium will never take hold, and the desire to build industry and actually sell items to other players, or build consortiums to provide goods and services will never materialise. Right now the ore is at a price that's too good to miss and selling it back into the system is the easiest and quickest way to break the recession that 0.23 placed on the community.
 
Remove the bots, let the true supply and demand take a hold, watch the markets grow and stabilise and watch industry grow in the way it was intended, to sustain the wider community and provide a genuine game mechanic.
 
"The great virtue of a free market system is that...it is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another" - Milton Friedman