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Sigtyr

Alpha Tester
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  1. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to IvanGrozniy in How would you have fixed DU ?   
    Well.. as a start, don't build an MMO on cloudfront.
     
    Someone here said they shouldn't have worked on PvP. Well.... The first thing NQ (JC) said when after they finished their prototype is that they will be working on atmo pvp. They didn't of course.
     
    The whole idea of the game, making cities, making a civilization, emergent sandbox blah blah blah... 
     
    Why does a city get built?
    1) protection against outside dangers
    2) quick access to resources / commodities 
    3) trading is easier and safer
    4) social rules
    5) a city is a bastion and safe haven that controls the surrounding lands
     
    I can go on... The point is there are social / political / evolutionary pressures that cause people to get together to create trading hubs, towns, cities. The city exists because it has to, it has a vital organizational purpose, it doesn't just appear because someone wants to make a pretty building.
     
    DU pvp is basically optional, there is no danger from anything. There's no pressure of any kind. People don't have social interactions that are complex enough to force them to start thinking about cities — because cities don't matter. 
     
    Plenty of people have built fancy hubs. Some people have used them because they were fancy or somewhat convenient. But at the end of the day they are all empty voxel art, they do not matter, they do not affect anything. Every person in the game can build their own castle / city without consequence. The game is devoid of any necessary preconditions that makes social organization emergent enough so as to make cities necessary.
     
    There's no pvp danger to hide from, there's nothing in pve to defend against. Resources are plenty, no one needs to rent a house at some voxel city, they can always build their own.
     
    In short focus on pve elements, voxelmancy, making sure everyone gets what they want immediately... It devalues the sandbox and devalues what is made in the sandbox. Because it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
     
    Ow... And don't build an mmo on cloudfront.
  2. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Aaron Cain in How would you have fixed DU ?   
    Frankly, looking back to the start the main issue here is the servers, the ideas are still nice, the outcome is not. What did make the most difference? I believe its server stress, from day one till now.
     
    All restricions should be returned, mining should be mining, ores should regrow, schematics scrapped and replaced with a working tech tree, industry real and the production cheap and abundant, this all to make the most stuff possible so nobody cares if their capital hip gets destroyed in all out war.  reintroduction of the ultra cores, and thats upto 2 km or larger, or better yet introduce core-less structure building.
    Make industry dynamic, actually add the stargates And make the teleport systems be produceable to all.
    Make it possible to actually have effective cities, so reintroduce html, also beds, chairs, showers need an actual, use, also homes should have a use. that way people come and actually feel like they have a life in DU, add a bit of Sims into DU. If NPC should be there make them automatically appear in cities and able to communicate, bond, etc by a impressive AI system.
    Add other races but make them all playable, and then not some groce stuff, just popular stuf like androids, kitties, whatever
     
    In short, maka a game we dont need npc other then simply social interaction, and maybe marry and get DU-kids with because we can actually all be what we want to be since servers dont restrict us, bring out those other solar systems, stop with the 3 HQ restriction and make plots buyable and selleble per plot, and stop taxes.
     
    I can continue for hrs but well im not in game development, If you look at all other popular games and combine all the stuff there its about 5 minutes and you have anything you need  in a game. 
     
    I still think this can be turned around, so NQ give me a call and lets see what I can DU for you now  Ill even DU it for free! I'm not into MMO gaming for over 30 years for nothing, my word is my bond.
     
    So here an open invitation to invite me and more here to look at what can easely be done to turn the game around.
     
    First Tip, open an event for modders to add functions to lifeless stuff that actually matters!
  3. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to CptLoRes in How would you have fixed DU ?   
    This is the only part I slightly disagree with in your post. And the reason is that NQ never even came close to finish the tools we need to make proper content. So all they really proved was that a game with subpar content creation tools, will fail when they are supposed to be a content creation game.. Duh!
     
    But I do agree that unless the players are given so much freedom that they could script fully interactive content (and we disregard all the potential exploit issues), then yes there must be some PVE elements to make a game fun and interesting for normal players.
     
    And this is part of the problem. It would appear that the only players NQ have been listening to, are certain PVP focused org players who have gotten a foot inside the door. And the interests of those hardcore org players does not even remotely represent the needs and wants of the majority of normal players in DU who has a life outside the game..
     
  4. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Aaron Cain in How would you have fixed DU ?   
    @Zeddrick Well written arguments, nothing to add there.
    One other thing NQ did and keeps on doing to make it impossible for players to have fun is limit really everything. Almost everything that was possible in alpha has gotten a limitation of some kind, and those in general did make the game worse.
     
    In general if the players need to generate content but the content generated is costing you too much to keep on a crippled server the road forward is severely blocked.
     
    Game got so boring there is actually no reason to log in, frankly i rather go to work and have fun with my co-workers
  5. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Zeddrick in How would you have fixed DU ?   
    So for me, there were all sorts of small failures along the way (many in beta, some since) but they are all really just details next to the central problem.  One of the key features of the design for DU was that players would provide *all of the content*.  That meant that the game just needed to provide the mechanics and frameworks and literally everything else would be player driven.
     
    Now players did actually try to do this.  There were people who created puzzles, etc for people to solve, created factions who fought each other, tried to build whole cities and many other interesting things.  The game and its developers seem to fight against content creators at every turn - recent examples being ship builders being put off because the stacked element checker means they have no way to know whether or not they are selling ships which will error 6 months later and warring factions being put off because nobody can shoot each other in battles.
     
    Putting that aside though, I think that the one thing this game has proved beyond all doubt is that a game with solely player built content does not work.  You need to have some other content created by the game itself first in order to create gameplay loops that players can do when they aren't doing any group content.  A player needs to be able to just log in, play for 1/2 an hour, enjoy that time and profit from it.

    So the one thing I would have done right away is add some background life to the game.  Put creatures in that might attack the player, make some basic challenges on the ground and in space, give players something to shoot at and reasons for doing so (protect base, get resources, whatever).  That would also give them a reason to team up, live in walled villages or space stations with a large shield, etc.  Some of this was in the original game design videos which were put out.  Then I would have built on it by adding more of a survival element to the game, adding PvE and NPCs to allow players to make their spaces more interesting.  I can build a huge space station but it has nobody in it at the moment, let me make it more interesting, make a bar where NPCs come and players I let in might be able to get missions from those NPCs.  I think that would have given players much more of a sense of shared purpose and struggle and a reason to come together into groups and play together.
     
    As it is the game is, frankly, boring.  It's a game relying on player created content which literally deletes player created content on a regular basis made by a company which has no problem with breaking existing content and blaming that on the players trying to create it.  The world itself, and the constructs the game allows you to create, are fairly static and uninteresting too and it is difficult to come up with actual functions for many of the rooms in a construct.  I can add a bed but it has no use.  A lot of the cool stuff I see is just huge empty shell buildings with one or two rooms because people made them to look pretty rather than because they needed the space for things.
  6. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to BlindingBright in number of players connected   
    IF NQ had implemented their original concept for factories, as presented in Kickstarter... it'd be a singular item that is fed resources and output a finished construct. (See Empyrioin) That would not have created the server load like the MMO version of satisfactory we got did. 
     
    At peak my mega factory had 14,000 elements, with at least half of that running full tilt during my peak ship production. I'm sure it created server load .. it definitely ate bandwidth just standing next too and sometimes took 10 minutes to fully load in. 
     
    Still sad that DU has a much smaller playspace, and that I can't make the same sort of factories to output finished ship kits without a ton more work/hassle. That was fun for me, and it's largely gone. As a solo player I could spend an hour a week picking up my ore, dump it into my factory, and output ships for a week with minimal hassle... took a lot to get to that point, but in the live game... its much more tedious, ore rates are heavily limited now, and while it was possible with one account in Beta to do what I wanted, not possible in live... with a higher sub cost. 
     
    I miss DU, but I miss the DU from beta when we had in ground mining AND mining units AND asteroids... and factories could be largely automated... ya know, when it was easier to obtain resources and spend more time creating cool stuff... without worrying about land taxes, construct slots, and sub time running out and loosing what is created.
     
    I can see what players warned NQ about has come to pass, many said going back on their promise of no wipes, raising the price, and reducing game content... might see a spike of hype but will fade... and looking at steam, game is pretty dead looking, with the top comment recommending another dead game, Starbase lol. 
     
    Biggest issue... is DU is more punishing that any other MMO I have played if you take a break... you could loose a lot of your built up stuff that you grinded for... meaning that those that leave the game are even less likely to comeback as their personal investment in the game essentially gets deleted. This one reason alone is why I'll never come back, and why DU will likely never recover... I doubt this issue is even on NQ's radar. 
     
    Maybe a couple years of solid development... but development feels  non Existent in 2023. 
     
    So glad I got to play that version of the game, sad it doesn't exist anymore. Good times, thanks for all the fish NQ. To all the NQ staff I've interacted with, besides one, thank you. I hope your next endeavor is better! 
  7. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to CptLoRes in Talemai is solid proof that ore distribution with infinite ore pools that can be claimed is terrible for game   
    The problem is not having dedicated scanning orgs, but that they are able to effectively scan entire planets and by that gain a disproportional large control over the game.
     
    And again, not the scanner orgs fault since they are just "making their own game" in one of the sadly few ways possible right now.
     
    And no NQ, the solution is not to increase tax, or to time gate scanning even more, or to make scanning units even heavier and more expensive or any such limitations. That would just make the game even more unplayable for beginners and solo players so that orgs would dominate even more, just like with every other &#*! feature where you have 'balanced' creatives and solo players out of the game.
     
    The solution is to fix the fundamental issues in the game (will never happen, so all this is just hypothetical) and then enable mining and distribute A LOT more ore, so that we can have access to resources and actually be creative and "make our own game" again.
     
    In other words turn back the clock to how it was earlier, and then start working from there to give us the game you said you would make.
  8. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Dixiii in THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread   
    I have more and more doubt that this game will turn better and become more active in nearest months. After two patches there is a complete silence. No news, no announces of next patches and features. Nothing. Same time, I see more and more claimed tiles turning inactive and fading away. Same time market activity falls.
     
    Because currently there are almost none interesting teamplay activities. Various means of T1 resource gathering and selling it to market bots (even distant bots on Teoma/Jago) gone. With word "for economy balance". The only income of quanta, left in game, are boring transport missions, that are mostly "waste a few hours of real life time watching your ship flying in space at max speed". Nothing else! I do not count 100k login reward,  and 300k challenge that is same everyday and can't be considered fun activity anymore. This is too few for a mmorpg game to keep it alive.
     
    DU has nice graphics, interesting crafting, complex ship building. But all those features should be supported by easy understandable and fun to do everyday activities like PvE mob shooting, searching something on planets (for sample: same wrecks hunting, but on planets, and with any PvE fights on arrival, even with turrets). Else, freshly arrived players from Steam loose interest very fast, since  they see no easy to do activities.
  9. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Celestis in RESET NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT - Discussion thread   
    We purchased the Beta keys when we backed the game during Alpha so these should count as full subscriptions. Will they?
  10. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Deathknight in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    I made a thread devoted to this topic, but it has been suggested to me to make this post here to ensure that NQ sees it.
     
    @NQ
     
    With the information that has been provided by since the schematic changes have first been announced, I thought I would give some more detailed feedback. As you are keen to rush this straight to the prod server, I think getting early feedback will be useful.
     
    Looking Good
    Adding an additional time component to the industry process looks like it will an effective and fair way to reduce the ability of any one individual to mass produce items, at least without a large quanta cost. This seems to have the potential to be fair, if the numbers are tweaked properly.
     
    The Economy
    This additional dependency on Quanta is problematic for the economy I think. It would not be the case if the economy was in better shape, but as it is we are suffering from massive deflation due to the large quantity of currency leaving the game. This is an entire topic of its own, but I will just say that I hope you have further plans to fix the economy. Your concept of "faucets and sinks" does not work in a real economy. Maybe in a single player game that works, but in a real economy, currency should circulate --not be created and destroyed--.
     
    Tedious
    If the system works as described, where players need to place schematics into each assembly machine, this will make the process quite tedious. This is not the tedium of hard work that is rewarded, this is tedium that is unnecessary and will not be well received. Existing industry players will react poorly, knowing how pointless this exercise is. New players will quickly find it laughable. The consequences of this type of manual process will be numerous and negative. Organizations that run factories will not be able to easily manage feeding machines with a small number of players. This means expanding access to factories to a larger number of players, which is a security risk and would be difficult to coordinate.
     
    Suggestion to Reduce Tedium
    Please create a way for players to interact with the factory as a whole. Since connections cannot be made across cores, a factory can be considered a core with industry elements on it. Perhaps an industry element, like a schematic catalog machine, could be created that would be one per core. Link a container as input to this machine and let schematics placed into the container feed into the catalog. Once stored in the catalog, any machine within the factory could be allowed to use the schematics within the catalog. This would allow management of a factory to continue much as it does now, with schematics becoming another resource that is consumed as it becomes available. Even smaller player factories would benefit from the design immensely, as this would remove one of the most hated aspects of the 0.23 schematics patch. Larger org factories would take much less tedious planning and tracking of schematics, as well as the chore of feeding the machines. Members could donate schematics my leaving them in a container and any schematic would be welcome and could eventually be used. The catalog machine could be quite useful in a factory, showing schematics that are stored as well as schematics that are needed to allow stopped machines to run.
        
    I understand from your most recent video that you do not want to further automate industry, and I understand that desire. Implementing some way to feed schematics into the appropriate machines automatically would allow factories to be managed in a very similar way to how the currently operate. It is rather fun running a factory currently. If you feel factories need additional balancing, please do it via means other than intentionally making it miserably tedious.
     
    Thanks for your time
    Deathknight
  11. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Novean-32184 in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    So effectively, two years of beta has provided us with .. cost reduction and capping what players can do.
     
    Normally you'd run the numbers before you start designing something that can accommodate those numbers.  NQ is working in full reverse in this regard.

    And this message pretty much tells us NQ is not done yet.. This implementation clearly is still way too liberal for their goals and so they will put on the limiters even tighter in the weeks ahead .
     
     
    That NQ is comparing their operation to a "private server owned by a friend" just is the icing on the cake and for me really drives home the desperation they feel around keeping their game servers running and the cost this incurs for them.
     
    No NQ, this is not "a private server owned by a friend". This is a commercial enterprise where you charge more than your average private server would cost per account per month to provide less and less freedom and move away further and further from what you set out to build back in 2014.
     
    You were supposed to be building a single shard world where hundreds of thousands (if not "millions") of players can interact, build, fight and have fun "without limitation". It seems you are not able to deliver that from what we're seeing here.
     
    And no, that is not toxic, unconstructive or unfair. It is a realistic observation based on which I form the opinion I am entitled to have and share as feedback. Feel free to show me I'm wrong as so far, I see nothing that even comes close to doing so.
  12. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Zarcata in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    A proper menu for factions is generally missing. Not just an organization (although even for orgs the menu is ridiculous).
    It also lacks the possibilities of diplomacy among the organizations and the factions, it lacks an election system per faction that is founded. It lacks possibilities to create more ranks. I just don't understand it, there are games that are already much further and have great content, there you can see how it works in terms of content. With NQ and DualUniverse, I have the impression that they have developers who are stuck at the 1999/2000 level. Does NQ even know the current game market, what is offered there? In what form, quality with what content for players and its possibilities?
     
  13. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to CptLoRes in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    It was that initial idea that drew me towards this game also. And with JC coming from a science background I suspect he took inspiration from something called a "complex system", where the sum of many simple mechanics emerge into something much more complex like a complete ecosystem.
     
    So while a complex system had never been proven as the fundamental design in a MMO, there was ample precedence for it working in nature, economics etc.
    But all this was made completely and utterly pointless when NQ could not even bring the basic tools (simple mechanics) required for this into the game.
  14. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Novean-32184 in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    Actually, the initial tutorial idea I thought was great but at the time NQ did not have the experience and/or knowledge to fix the massive issues they had with each player coming in entering an instanced tutorial.
     
    The tutorial allowed you to build a simple hover and then a space capable small construct. You would then leave the instance with your construct and re-enter the "real" game world. It could have easily been expanded and have blueprints and a pocket ship added to "bring back".
     
    The core idea was good though and frankly, with their current knowledge and tools in game, NQ could make it work just fine and expand on it, which I do think was the idea as I think this is what became the VR mode. But under pressure by now financially, for "beta" they choose to stick with their "temporary" idea of districts and then markets instead of going back to a good idea and implement it now that they had the understanding of how to do it.
  15. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Novean-32184 in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    This is probably not far off. JC envisioned DU to literally be box with sand and _everything_ in it was to be done by players. In the "design" as it went to alpha, there was an ark ship location which led to a tutorial location and from there you had .. nothing.. and the players were to do it all.
     
    Players were supposed to organise, be the ones to build markets, and so were given the option to "do everything" in an org structure and work towards that. Orgs create wealth and from it create marketplaces where they sell their output, competing with each other. And from that competition other things can organically evolve, including conflict. That was the idea of the game's main design and to be honest that sounds not terrible to me. (and in broad strokes, pretty much describes EVE, which is the big inspiration for DU).
     
     
    The player markets never happened though, that is now all controlled by NQ. The rest of the game is still in a mode which really drives orgs to become self-sufficient entities and they do not need the markets at all in either direction. And NQ just keeps trying to make this a player problem while it really is a core design problem of the game which they just refuse (or are incapable) to see, regardless of how clearly it is being pointed out to them.
  16. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to blundertwink in NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread   
    Just to put this out there....DU has a 3-person design team as of now per a video put out by their design lead. 
     
    The design lead's design credits include:
    1993's "Pac in Time" by Kalisto 1993's "Fury of the Furries" by Mindscape 1997's "Nightmare creatures" by Activision 2015's "Trivial Pursuit" by Gameloft S.E. (yes the board game) The mining mini game starts to make sense, doesn't it...?
     
    This is a designer with more experience in simple/arcade style games...so simple timers and mini-games probably feel very comfortable.
     
    I don't want to be too harsh...but is this really the right experience for designing an MMO? 
     
    Compared to the former Eve online designer who quit after <1 year...which, we still don't really know the story of why they left. 
  17. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Deathknight in @NQ - Feedback on schematics   
    @NQ
     
    With the information that has been provided by since the schematic changes have first been announced, I thought I would give some more detailed feedback. As you are keen to rush this straight to the prod server, I think getting early feedback will be useful.
     
    Looking Good
    Adding an additional time component to the industry process looks like it will an effective and fair way to reduce the ability of any one individual to mass produce items, at least without a large quanta cost. This seems to have the potential to be fair, if the numbers are tweaked properly.
     
    The Economy
    This additional dependency on Quanta is problematic for the economy I think. It would not be the case if the economy was in better shape, but as it is we are suffering from massive deflation due to the large quantity of currency leaving the game. This is an entire topic of its own, but I will just say that I hope you have further plans to fix the economy. Your concept of "faucets and sinks" does not work in a real economy. Maybe in a single player game that works, but in a real economy, currency should circulate --not be created and destroyed--.
     
    Tedious
    If the system works as described, where players need to place schematics into each assembly machine, this will make the process quite tedious. This is not the tedium of hard work that is rewarded, this is tedium that is unnecessary and will not be well received. Existing industry players will react poorly, knowing how pointless this exercise is. New players will quickly find it laughable. The consequences of this type of manual process will be numerous and negative. Organizations that run factories will not be able to easily manage feeding machines with a small number of players. This means expanding access to factories to a larger number of players, which is a security risk and would be difficult to coordinate.
     
    Suggestion to Reduce Tedium
    Please create a way for players to interact with the factory as a whole. Since connections cannot be made across cores, a factory can be considered a core with industry elements on it. Perhaps an industry element, like a schematic catalog machine, could be created that would be one per core. Link a container as input to this machine and let schematics placed into the container feed into the catalog. Once stored in the catalog, any machine within the factory could be allowed to use the schematics within the catalog. This would allow management of a factory to continue much as it does now, with schematics becoming another resource that is consumed as it becomes available. Even smaller player factories would benefit from the design immensely, as this would remove one of the most hated aspects of the 0.23 schematics patch. Larger org factories would take much less tedious planning and tracking of schematics, as well as the chore of feeding the machines. Members could donate schematics my leaving them in a container and any schematic would be welcome and could eventually be used. The catalog machine could be quite useful in a factory, showing schematics that are stored as well as schematics that are needed to allow stopped machines to run.
        
    I understand from your most recent video that you do not want to further automate industry, and I understand that desire. Implementing some way to feed schematics into the appropriate machines automatically would allow factories to be managed in a very similar way to how the currently operate. It is rather fun running a factory currently. If you feel factories need additional balancing, please do it via means other than intentionally making it miserably tedious.
     
    Wallet
    It is not clear in the video where the money to pay for the schematic copy will come from. I take this to mean that it comes from the players wallet? If that is currently what is planned, please consider adding an org wallet selection. Transferring money between players constantly is a real pain and that is what the wallets are there for.
     
    Thanks for your time
    Deathknight
     
     
  18. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Deathknight in NQ: Suggestion for new resource/mechanic   
    I love this game, it has captured my heart like no other. I have seen the massive potential from the first time I played. I have always had this wistful fantasy of what it could one day be.
     
    Over the course of the beta, there have been many changes, the game has become much more stable, and these changes touch on many different avenues of gameplay. One area that doesn't seem to have received any attention at all however, is making the game more social.
     
    The best memories I have in DU involve coming together with other players. It might be pure shenanigans, or to mine together, or maybe to build collaboratively. 
     
    All of the scenarios I mentioned eventually stopped happening. There are many aspects of this game that heavily incentivize players to do particular things. For example, taxes heavily incentivize players to make money, not to hang out with friends and race ships.
     
    How can we expect there to be any social scene in the game when both carrot and stick are being used to drive people toward things that NQ wants us to do? We can build really awesome creations, player designed marketplaces full of gorgeous player made ships, but how do we get the bustling "living" feeling in the world, where people are together in an area, like is shown in promotional material and has been spoken about as a desire of NQ through development?
     
    In my opinion, if this game is going the route of having so many costs and those being balanced with carrots that the players will want to pursue, then there needs to be a currency or commodity for socialization. My proposal is that some form of influence system is created, which will reward players and orgs that contribute to projects that cause players to gather and build together.
     
    This system would also need to provide a benefit to players that visit these areas. We currently have a job system that lets us hire people to pick up our market orders and deliver them to us, without ever seeing the hauler. Super convenient! It does not feel like a massively multiplayer game however, when we never go to a place and see other people.
     
    Now if we had player created market areas (these types of locations have already been created, but many get no traffic) we could incentivize players for using them. Builders that gather and build with other builders that have accumulated some influence, could grow their influence. Orgs that provide these market areas could gain influence as people visit. The visitors could gain some small degree of influence by just shopping.
     
    There really are a lot of directions this could be taken. Maybe an very influential player or org might see a benefit from other players claiming hexes around them, and also building influence. The core driver of this player interaction should be rewarded for helping players gather. Players should in turn be rewarded for their part in creating this living part of the game world. Maybe the most influential player/org in the area gets reduced taxes, or a portion of the tax revenue of those tiles around them?
     
    I leave it to you to flesh out the mechanics and how the rewards should work, but I will suffice it to say that players have been asking for social features for a long time, and now that the game is less free-form and you are strongly encouraged to do specific –profitable– things, we really could use a reason to interact, now more than ever.
     
    Deathknight
     
  19. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to CptLoRes in How DU is going to destroy a free market   
    Ore is not in demand, simply because of a few things.
     
    1. Mining ore is still the only true source of income in this game. I.e everybody is producing ore one way or another.
    2. There is hardly anything worth doing in this game. And the few hard core builders that has not yet been chased away, cannot be expected to sustain the game by themself.
    3. There is simply to few players (for many reasons) left to sustain the game the way NQ wants us to play.
     
    And I hardly think turning on element damage (NQ tried many times but you know, still lots of game bugs making people crash for no fault of their own) and decay would make a big change to this. And there is also a fundamental problem with decay in a persistent building game (much the same as with players not being able to leave for extended periods because of tax), so a power system would be a better fit.
     
    And I also suspect making DU even more grindy as it is now with no real purpose for players to keep playing, would just make even more of us leave.
  20. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Creator in Ongoing Discussions   
    With current state of game if they release they will have an influx of probably 50,000 players in one month, servers will tank, game will be review bombed on game review sites, and the population will fall to around 5k players probably, that will taper back to a little more than what we have over a 6 month period.

    I don't care what the dev's say about how many players they supposedly have. What I care about it what I see. Which is usually the same 20 some people in chat, and then Me, Myself, and I in my area.

    Regardless of wipe or no wipe, there is a ton of grind and not a lot of reason for grinding. 
  21. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to CptLoRes in I want Asteroid mining on Planets too   
    I just don't understand how NQ manages to always come up with subpar solutions to problems, some times even breaking the game trying to solve problems that does not exist like element collision and the latest nerf of elements.
     
    There are SOO many ways NQ could have made this game better and more interesting, many of them without requiring a lot of dev time. But instead they seem to be spending most of the dev time breaking the game down and making it less enjoyable.
     
    Take for example the cave systems you find everywhere on Alioth. All NQ has to do, is to randomly spawn large ore clusters (like the ones you get from the mining units, but on steroids) inside those caves and voila. Instant sense of exploration in the game that serves a purpose, and at minimal dev cost using mostly existing functionality no less. Then spend a little bit more dev time and have some rare occurrences of higher grade ore/aliens artifacts/collectible items/whatever spawn in the caves also, and people would go nuts.
     
    And this is just me writing down the first thought that occurred to me, while NQ staff is supposed to be thinking about such things all day long.
  22. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Serula in SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread   
    We have been through wipe after wipe and major impactful changes in the last few years and it was never easy. I've rage quit myself a few times because of it.
     
    Taking things into perspective
    Having said that I can say that I'm 100% for any change needed to make DU the best it can be. Weather that means a full wipe or a partial one should depend on what that means for DU and not a few unhappy players. In the end if you want to achieve great things you have to go through the mud sometimes.
     
    Reward
    I remember some time in a long lost past I played a similar game. We had buildingcontests where people could win exclusive skins or decorations that were highly desired and admired. I think it might be a good idea to award everyone that has supported the development of DU with an exclusive skin or decoration.
     
    Final word
    Since the start of my DU journey a few years ago till today I still cannot see how it is possible to make DU fun without any form of NPC or survival element. And from the NQ video's I get the idea that even NQ doesn't know how to make it fun with it's current player only mantra. I have very little faith in this concept and I don't understand why it has to be this way other than that it's a lot of work to make. It may be a lot of work but also has a lot of reward if done right. In addition to that as a metaverse DU needs heavy social interaction features, there is none of that right now.
     
     
  23. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Remagz in SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread   
    I don't think a full wipe will really help new players anyway. I've been playing for about a month and a half and I'm not really finding I have a lack of money. You can comfortably make 50 million doing the safe zone missions within 2 or 3 weeks, even more if you go for the riskier mission chains.
     
    If you full wipe, the experience existing players have will still allow them to get up to speed faster, find all the tier 4/5 ore faster and it will just return to the same state. The only real issues are the Talent points, which can be fixed with catch up mechanics and the permanent mining control.
     
    The catch up mechanic for talent points could be something like a multiplier letting new players earn talent points much faster depending on their total talent points compared to the total possible talent points they could have had if they started at the very beginning. The multiplier can decrease as they get closer to the theoretical max so the longer term players still have a slight edge at the top end, taking more time to close the gap fully with a reducing catch up multiplier.
     
    For mining, a few ideas could be to have quarterly reseeding of the planets mining hotspots, or perhaps have tier 4/5 ore in a tile gradually deplete when mined and once it is fully depleted, the ore can respawn in a new undiscovered tile, the latter idea being more subtle and evolving instead of a mad scanning dash.  This would prevent permanent holds on higher tier ores and allow newer players to have a chance of finding some.
     
    If you were to do a partial reset you could avoid people hoarding resources by just deleting everything in all cargo containers too. But really, any sort of wipe or partial wipe isn't going to work. You need to put in place mechanics to prevent any permanent advantage. Mining locations are a permanent advantage, Talent points are a permanent advantage, sort those out and you don't need a wipe.
  24. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to FutonTorpedo in SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread   
    Wipe or no, I don't care at this point, but for the love of god if you're going to do a full wipe then please just obliterate the entire Alioth system and finally implement that fancy new planet tech you demo'd (and then abandoned) near the end of Alpha.  Planets looked like they were going to be far more interesting to explore over the boring 'noise' generated planets....
     
    Just my 2 cents.  If you're gonna wipe, give us some amazing looking planets to explore.
  25. Like
    Sigtyr reacted to Tordan in SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread   
    How much WORK or EFFORT I have put into this game is irrelevant, and there are very few who can argue they have put in more time and effort into building then I have.

    I have no expectation of work product, in this or any other game. Nor is there any legal right to it, in this or any other game. Games have run for years, only to shut down overnight with no warning. No expectation of compensation, no compensation will ever come.

     I have my knowledge, and if the Stroke I had in January didn't wipe that, then for sure NQ can't.
     
    All I truly care about is that we hit the ground at release with solid:
    1. Lore/Cannon for it all. Write a damn story to explain it.
    2. A functional communication system. (long neglected and def NOT ready for release)
    3. The ability to choose how much audio and visual "noise" we want the game to display. IE a functional UI with settings controls. (long neglected and def NOT ready for release)
    4. A well thought out plan on how to start an economy, and how to adjust it when it goes out of wack (which it will)
    5. A strong and robust set of game mechanics that are FUN to play, and prioritize those who want CONSTRUCT a civilization over those who what to hack, slay, and steal. 
     
    give me that, and I'm willing to start over building shacks and scooters.
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