Sigtyr

Almost withyou exception this has been the journey every player of this game has had.

I came in to this game pre .23 and I can tell you I had a blast, it was great fun and there seemed to be a fair few people playing, sure, it wasn't perfect but I at least had fun creating a factory, figuring out what I needed, visiting other planets and searching for resources etc. 

Then came .23, ok, wasn't the best, schematics sucked but I built up a collection, I continued building ships and planning infrastructure for a guild.

Then came the missions, I was a whale, I played that shit and made billions, it was weirdly fun optimising ships for bringing a lot of packages out of orbit, for optimising the space-based ship to have exactly enough fuel to get out of pipe and then get to the destination, drop those packages onto a atmos ship and land, then of course refill and go again.

It kept me interested for a bit until I saw the playerbase dwindle, I saw NQ floundering about achieving very little and simply promising to communicate more and to 'deliver' more.

Fast forward more than half a year and the vast majority of changes have not been to improve gameplay but to turn this into a game that you pay for monthly but log in once a day for a few hours to do 'your dailies' and it stinks of them trying to save on costs.

At about the same time they did the 'mining overhaul' they raised the sub price for a beta game which to me was just salt in the wound.

Now they are limiting number of cores.

Things they have done which are actually good: An additional tool for building (great but so much more is needed: multi-core support? the ability to take down a core and stash it in a container?), Cleaning up markets (let's not pretend this isn't also for making a saving on the server side).

As you will likely accuse me of (with just cause) being bitter, let me remind you that I and many others have watched a game with promise and potential slowly degrade in playerbase and even features, with the new features primarily for reasons of them realising just how unscaleable their tech is and all the while charging us more for their mistake.

So nope, I don't hold out the most hope for this game, I can't imagine they can keep this game in beta for too long and if they can't complete the following list in its entirety before launch I don't see it taking (that is sad because i really do love this game and it is because of that I am unwilling to hope because I can see it going the way of the dinosaur)....anyhow that list:

1. massive pvp overhaul, it is the worst pvp in any game I have ever seen, I see they were trying to do some kind of eve-esque gameplay but it isn't even close, eve pvp can actually be really fun.
2. make planets more diverse.
3. give purpose to building other than just storage for factories/containers.
4. rethink the automining calibration mechanic, it is hot garbage.
5. add a tool to:
  a. take down a core and move the components of that core into containers.
  b. allow players to see what a core looks like before putting it down, currently moving multi-core structures is like pulling teeth.
  c. some way of figuring out what angle something is (even if it is just 45/90/135/180 and so on.
6. 'fix' construction of ships - with changes to brakes coming and stacking it is going to be super hard to make something look nice and be functional, we shouldn't have to choose.
7. add a mechanic to track ships further than just 2SU, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack and it isn't fun, bonus: add this mechanic and then add ways to construct ships which are 'stealthy'.
8. Add addtional ship parts, examples: XL wing variants, XL atmos engines, brakes with vastly superior stopping power (at the cost of fuel), oh and fuel - combustiable fuel - when I have a suit which lets me fly into space and enter a planets atmosphere with no issues? Yeah parts that use other sources of power which are higher tier and much more expensive to lose.
9. Add a cost to AGG and make the thing less mind numbingly boring to use (make it go up faster)
10. review sub warp speed cap, 30k is bs, no one wants to do missions taking them 5 hours of afk for a few mill, players should be able to exceed this cap and pay for it in fuel and ship design.
11. add power.
 
I went a little ott but I do think 90percent of this stuff needs looking at and addressing before they can look forward to a player base that makes this game a sustainable business.

I hope they succeed but the track record isn't there and their motivations as of late have been solely focussed on sorting out their lack of planning and foresight from the past.
 

The current tax/mu system is bad design, full stop.
The are so many problems with it, it is not even funny. Take for example how insanely high the threshold for mining has now become to a newb.
 
The moment a new player tries to do anything outside the sanctuary tile, he now suddenly needs to know how to place a territory unit, static core, container, mining unit and link them just to be able to mine some ore more efficiently then running around like a chicken picking up rocks on the ground.
 
And before he can even do any of that, he first has to be able to buy and build a ship capable of lifting a territory scanner if he wants to be able to find a good tile. A tile that is also becoming harder and harder to find every day, and forcing newbs to have to travel further and further away from strategic important places like districts/markets just to find one worth mining.
 
And when all this is done, the reward is that the player now has to pay a constant tax upkeep just to stay afloat.
 
In short, this game is in bad need of more players. And it should be NQ's first priority above anything else to design features in the game that will attract new players.
 
 
 

To use NQ's own words they want finding wrecks to be an rare and "exclusive" event. Because you know, this game already has so much general content that they needed to add something special for the hard core players.. sigh..
 
And to illustrate how bad it is. I have been playing the game for as long as it has existed, and I have yet to even see one of those fabled wrecks...
And then there is also the small problem of wreck value not even coming close to justifying the time and effort apparently needing to find them. And while the value of the new space wrekcs may be higher (to be confirmed..), it is a moot point if nobody can find them in any sensible way.

NQ, I had hoped you had taken this to heart.
 
 
I had hoped we were being offered an alternative to mining/manufacturing and courier work. A chance to play as a humble scavenger. If this expectation was either misguided or unrealistic, please read no further. However, if this was the goal...
 
...what exactly were you going for? It's been a week and I have roamed PvP space, both in-between planets, and out in random directions for a couple thousand SU, and have not found so much as an XS wreck. It feels as if you took your implementation of asteroid finding and went in the complete opposite direction to the extreme. Unless the goal was to just have us chance upon a wreck, here are a few reasons scavenging is completely untenable.
 
- Detection distance: Space, as you know, is very big, and 2 SU is "needle in a haystack" metrics.
 
- Rate of travel: This problem is two-fold. One, if traveling at maximum speed you are doing about 2.5 SU per minute (forgive my math if I am off). This means that you have less than a two minute window on your hours long search to see a wreck IF it intersects your search sphere right down the middle. The second issue being braking distance. Due to the detection range being so small, even a slight delay in seeing a wreck dead ahead could lead to you losing it in the backtracking process. Sure, we could reduce our cruising speed, but now we are covering less ground in an already astronomical search.
 
- Spotting the wreck: As I mentioned you have a very small window of opportunity to even see a wreck in the perfect conditions. Are we expected to stare at our screens the entire time we are searching? Sure, some one may (perhaps already have) write some LUA to make an audible alarm if a radar contact pops up, but it hardly seems reasonable to have to rely on that. Slow-boating anywhere is an hours long process and to be expected to sit in your pilot seat staring at space is completely unreasonable.
 
- Number of wrecks: Only you know how many are truly out there, but I will speak to the type of density needed to reasonably satisfy a scrapper such as myself. Over the course of, say, a four hour play session, I would hope to see roughly 2-3 wrecks. They don't need to be "What a haul!", but I do need to see something for my efforts.
 
In a game that has all but zero PvE, this is a great opportunity to add some that doesn't require AI, but we need reasonable tools to succeed! Increasing detection distance significantly doesn't meaningfully affect PvP (*ahem* such as it is) due to lock-on distances remaining unchanged, and this would be just the simplest of solutions. If I'm the only one who feels this way go ahead and ignore me, but if there are others out there that feel the same way, please speak up now!

If you're going to implement this then you really need to fix the rubbish situation where players need to use a core just to put down some flooring to connect constructs.

My base has 8 constructs yet I need to use 10 additional cores just so I can have flooring to walk nicely between those 8 constructs. This is insane. You shouldn't need to use cores to place flooring. Flooring should be free on a territory

First off, I would just like to state up front, regardless of whether the proposed org changes are the right decision or not, I feel that the approach that has been taken, where this change is introduced independent from and after the introduction of mining units, is just flat out wrong. I was not pleased by the loss of traditional mining, but I drank the kool-aid and committed to trying mining. Many benefits to this system were touted by NQ. For example, the adjacency bonus. This system requires cores to use and incentivizes going bigger. The more tiles you mine (and thus cores you use) gives a larger benefit. So instead of a 1 to 1 benefit from each core used, we were encouraged by this system to grow the number of cores used. Only then, after all this work is done, do we get the carrot replaced with the stick.
 
Now that this ugliness is out of the way, my thoughts on the actual change:
In the right ballpark, but missed by a wide margin. This is a game of building and unlimited possibilities. All I see recently is limitations. In this solution, all constructs are treated equally. I don't think that this is the right approach.
 
We have little or no in game reasons to collaborate, outside of the human need for socialization. There is nothing in the game that actually benefits players coming together to work on projects. Where are the social features? Where is the benefit for orgs that add content and culture to the game?
 
I would like to see an influence system added to the game that would allow creators (either individuals or traditional orgs composed of many distinct players) to be incentivized for creating content in the game. If we the players are supposed to create the game content, we should not be punished for doing so, we should be rewarded.
 
There are many large projects in the game that NQ uses to advertise DU. This is the content and is what makes DU special. These projects consume cores and add value to DU. These projects should be rewarded. If we had a system of influence that rewarded content creators and gave a benefit to visit these constructs, this would be a giant step in the right direction.
As it stands now, many multi-core creations that enrich the game are at risk. These constructs are treated the same as a core that has mining units and nothing else on it.
 
Now if we had some system of influence, where players and orgs that create content that the community enjoys, we could be rewarded for creating excellent content. The rewards could be a decreased cost in core count because of the benefit to the game, decreased tax, etc. Beyond this, many game systems could be created or enhanced a great deal. We could vie for influence over a region and have some type of governmental control. Territory warfare doesn't need to be the only way we can impact the world and control an area. Just like music, art, and religion can shape our real world, works of art in the game should have an equal impact on the game world.
 
I want to see more wild creations from the mad scientist builders. All I see is that these players in particular are going to be hindered the most, yet these are the very players that provide the most benefit to the game and community. I would gladly pay an additional amount for my subscription to have the sandbox I fell in love with. I was sold a dream of player created cities and empires. The future I see is massive stress from monitoring tile taxes and core counts. Who wants to suddenly lose a project they have been working on for a couple of years, because they are ambitious and then have a real world problem take them away from the game for a bit?
 
My challenge to you NQ: I would like to know who is the creative lead on this game now. Please have this person come introduce themselves and explain what is the overall direction of the game. In spirit, DU does not seem to be heading to the same destination that we set out for at the start of beta, let alone what was pitched in the Kickstarter. I think we all would appreciate a better understanding of what the end goal is.

And this is what we tried telling NQ since 2017, but they never even acknowledged that there might be a problem until suddenly Demeter.
 
- We think you are underestimating how much people are going to dig, how will you handle the persistence server load?  Silence...
- How will you deal with fixed resources (ore and tiles) making it so that new players will have a harder and harder time staring the game since all the best spots will be taken?  Silence..
- This game is really difficult to learn for new players and the building system requires lots of resources to learn proper. How will you solve this? Silence...
- Can this game really function without PVE? Silence..
- How will you limit people from advancing to quickly but still have fun building?  Silence...
- The lag city stress test (pre-alpha thing before we had District 6 to highlight the same issue) shows that this game will not scale anywhere close to what you promised it would. Is this going to be fixed before release? Silence...
- Why is there so little progress being made with regard to improved game loops?  Deafening silence...

Generally, I'd say DU is losing it fast.
 
MUs were a proposal even before JC was promoted to irrelevance, but I'm pretty sure they were intended to work along side hand mining. I understand the performance reason for cutting hand mining... but as game design, they cut an actual game loop (even if some found it tedious) and replaced it chores that are not fun for anyone that I've heard of. Better game design would have been some combination of collapsing tunnels after a time, slowing hand ore extraction, regenerating ore - maybe with diminishing returns so a mine would need to be mined over a period of time but would eventually become exhausted, and, of course, MUs as an adjunct on player-owned tiles.
 
Before shields, combat involved team work with a pilot, some gunners shooting, and some engineers keeping the ship from blowing up. But with shields and now core stress, engineers will never again be a thing since core stress will kill the ship after the shield goes down before any serious repairs are needed. If we had fighter plane tactics (not planes-in-space mechanics - just tactics) or fleet tactics in game, we might still have some team work in the game, but those aren't really a thing and not likely to be because of the very long distance targeting plus RNG nature of the combat. I like the shield based combat when I don't want to fight, but it's boring when I do.
 
Demeter has pretty much killed the economy. There's no reason to do business with other players now. I've stopped mining above T1 (except for the chromite and natron I need to make fuel) because the market on higher tiers is too low to justify hauling the ore to market, and generally sell T1 to bots at the market near my moon base - because the player price isn't enough better to justify dealing with landing on Alioth and fighting the lag at D6.
 
So I rate DU as a total fail in 2021. Maybe they should start 2022 by hiring some game designers 'cause game design seems to be where the big failures are.

You're wrong here - DU uses Unigine for rendering on the client side but their server tech is proprietary. There is nothing wrong with running on AWS. AWS offers phenomenal scaling capabilities and is a fantastic solution for game hosting where player counts vary through the day and life cycle of the game.  It is frequently cheaper and better performance to host via AWS than in house if you are expecting a major difference between your high and low loads.
 
It would have cost NQ far more to buy whatever silly number of physical hosts they would have needed to host the game when it launched - and then what? The player count is likely less than a third of what it was a year ago.
 
The game engine and hosting were far from the primary failure points of DU. The lack of a game and the complete and total failure to listen to the community played a bigger factor.  JC literally played the game with infinite resourced and complained that mining was too easy despite never having mined.

Correct, that is another issue with asteroids. The spawning (and despawning) should not be limited to the weekend, it's bad game play + it's plain stupid to have a massive event like this schedule for when no devs are working to fix issues. 

Resources will never incentivise city building as that is more of a social structure mechanic. City building design solution would be more like this.
 
Social. DU has a couple of novelty cities that has popped up but there is absolutely no use for them. Cities are currently nothing more than empty ghost towns with the only purpose of filling up your voxel cache. Possible solution to this is too introduce a residency mechanic to give towns and cities a purpose. Mechanic could work as followed: Every character created has 2 possible residency declarations. A player can use these to declare residency on a static or space core. When a territory reaches a certain amount of resident players the territory owner can declare the territory as a village. This will give all residents certain bonuses while within the territory and some lesser bonuses for visitors. Bonuses could be anything from Indy to put down skills. As the territory gets more residents it can evolve to a town, city and metropolis. As it evolves the bonuses gets bigger and better and once you reach city state neighbouring territories with the same owner can share resident count and bonuses so expansion can continue.
 
 

If NQ has changed their plans to expand the universe and drive players in a way they will venture out then resetting what's in the ground every 6 months or so would not be a terrible idea. At he same time though, that reset would need to be random so that you will not have bots parked on a tile with high value ores, just mining it every cycle.
 
The whole problem with the territory claims is that they were supposed to drive communities to build cities and create their own facilities. More and more that is hollowed out to only being mining and/or industry as nothing else is really provided for and NQ has yet to give any indication on where those intial plans have gone. The whole metaverse idea really is nowhere to be seen at this time.

If there are massive changes to the mining mechanics we should all start new. Existing scans should not work for the new system of mining. The large orgs will claim all the available good tiles within the first day or two. They should have to go scan new like everyone else.
 
Taxes on territories are way too high considering the cost to buy a tile is 140 000. Now I pay 7 times as much PER WEEK just to keep owning it. INSANE. Taxes need to be 1/4 of this or smaller.
 
I like the direction that is being taken with auto miners but the taxes will ruin the game if they are left this high.
 
Also, I think when you place a mining unit it should not start at 0% calibration. I have to use calibration charges just to start it?? Seems wrong. Minimum calibration needs to be bigger than 0%. Not much but just something even if its only 10 %, there needs to be a minimum that isn't 0.

resolving the problems would probably not be too hard.
here are some suggestions:
1. territory costs should be cheap for the first tiles.. then increase exponetially.. stop the possibility to have players claim unlimited number of tiles using orgs/suborgs.
2. delete all existing scan results and make it a lot harder to identify the mega tiles. make it impossible for single orgs/players to claim a high quantity of them. we've seen players finding patterns before, scanning full planets and being able to claim all undiscovered mega nodes of high value within months before.
 

i just opened another thread just before this Q/A was created...
Ok, usually i am not negative but the balance of Demeter on the PTS server has some severe problems.
 
1. Territory costs of 1m per week:
this will lead to almost nobody claiming any tiles any more outside of the sanc moon unless the territory can produce some serious income. so all "player made content" will disappear after some time
 
2. Scanning results do not get deleted and show l/h for mining units
this will lead to ALL really valuable tiles being claimed within the first 24h after demeter goes live, as it is really easy to identify  the most powerful tiles for mining units if you have containers full with scanner results.
so after day 1, the fun is over and the "mega tiles" will be claimed by those players/orgs that have all the existing scans.
 
NQ, as demeter is balanced on the PTS, it would kill the game if it goes to the live server
 
- New players some days later would not have a chance to find income opportunities despite missions.
- earning quanta will be a lot harder, so people would stop spending.. this would kill industrialists workflow.
- the imbalance between experienced players/orgs and new players would get worse and even more players would demand a wipe or simply not enjoy the game

please reconsider your decisions.
 

The L/hr seem too low even with talent and adjacency bonus for the 1 mil/week tax. Either the rate needs to go up or the tax drastically reduced. The brake change is horrible. I know the current implementation was temporary, but requiring the entire brake to be exposed is going to usher in the golden age of freaking ugly ships. Please change the requirement to be only the front surface to be exposed.

Is Biden running the show? 1 M a week for tax's that is way to high do away with tax's and keep it how it is I would rather pay a high price upfront to not be taxed. That and people have real lives sometimes people might not be able to get logged into the game and then when they come back they will owe millions in tax's 

Not good tax's suck in RL no need to have them in a game. I have played other games that required tax's to be paid to keep land and it killed not only me but entire clans from playing it.  Looking at that I have I am not sure I would even be able to afford keeping what I have had for over a year now. I don't really see myself playing a game where all my time is used up to make sure my "tax's" are paid. I been all in 100% with DU but this change may make me rethink playing. 

Tax's can be a HUGE game braker. The only way you will be able to survive is if your in a large Org with a large cash flow the solo player and smaller orgs will die and people will stop playing. 

There is not, least not at all markets.

Market 3 on madis for example has the majority of tiles owned around the single market tile owned by a group of players collaborating on a city project. Market 3 construct itself pails in comparison next to NovaX and the MTI Buildings nearby- and has largely been tastefully integrated into the cityscape. We're more than happy to try and follow the rules, and will be taking down/removing any constructs that may fall outside the new guidelines.

The question is though, can we still get full use of our fully player owned tiles? Like, can we build to the edge? Most(almost all) of our primary structures are below the market height) though there is a nearby tall building that falls within 2km of the markets airspace, but is fully on a player owned tile. Likewise, can we not use screens nearby on several tiles next to the market? as they'd be within 2km of the market and would encase the entire player owned tile.

As it is, Market 3 on Madis is within 100m of the border to one of our tiles. Do these new market rules extend fully onto it?

A year to take out the trash. This literally should have been what they did day one. They lost money from people rage quitting at the market.

No idea where they are needed for, to frustrate people? hold them back? money sink? Because decent development of a research approach to crafting was never tried? Because nanananana? till this day i have not seen a single reason why they are needed that makes sence.
 
But apparently the schematics were needed more then a few thousand alpha players who really stopped playing in the week following the introduction. And all is well with a good reason or explanation, but none is given.
 

For me the big positive is that the roadmap as it is now presented is much more achievable for NQ and inline with their progress so far. It feels like that, with JC out of the way, they are coming around to not overpromising all the fancy things but committing to what they can achieve. And that is certainly good.
 
On the other hand, asteroids without AvA/AvC mechanics really do not make much sense. Once you get a character on the asteroid you are entirely safe, you dig a hole, drop a core and a container and start mining. your container is safe from harm until the area is clear  to be collected. Potentially, this could be interesting for missions though, you mine out the asteroid, then leave a hauler mission for someone to bring it home and the collateral covers any risk..

From what was "promised" in December by JC most is now not even mentioned. There is no word on:
Energy and power management Player Markets Vertex Editor AvA / AvC / CvA Pets Assembly facilities / Mass construction Territory Warfare Second Solar System Stargates  
 
So indeed, there is good and not so great.. And a fair indication that "release" is at least two years away
 

The "red arrow" is in typical NQ fashion a poor mans version of territory war.
Quick and easy to implement, but riddled with balancing issues. Just the kind of solution NQ loves..
 
A: You are going to have to use resources finding and scanning the asteroids, mine the resources within a time limit and then transport ore while protecting yourself from attacks.
B: Just sit back and wait for the notification on where you should attack.

DU's in-game economy has been stagnant ever since the beginning of early access and is only continuing to recede as we lose more and more players over time! Why is that the case? You cannot support production without consumption mechanics! In a consumption-driven economy, money (coming from an external source) needs to be injected into the domestic market in which it will end up in the hands of consumers who will spend those money to support the local industries. The economic growth is dependent on consumption! If the consumption remains weak, it does not matter how much money they have in hand (and how much this eased), if they will not spend (because of lack of consumption mechanics in the game), there won't be much trading going on and therefore the lack of activity! The difference between this game and real-life is you don't need much in this game to get through! The game is 100% player-driven, with no progression, with lack of consumption mechanics. This explains why the activity in this game is as such! People have no expectation because there is no goal! The economy has no engine at all! If the game is designed to be minimalistic, there is only one way to play the game and that is to play it as a minimalist. You got too much items in this game that don't break down; you can literally provide for yourself without needing to trade; and there is not even any goal in this game but to continue to acquire more things that you don't need. What happens when you already get to the top of the mountain? You are discontent! So add more content for me to continue to have expectations! And you got to do something about our declining confidence in the economic system such as the exploits, free quantas, the bots, etc.! Not only is the economy stagnant and receding, it is also broken to the point that it already collapsed!  

To compare mining a mill takes less time, and zero risk except for potentially crashing your transporter.
 
And more importantly. Neither sitting in a cockpit looking at stars for an hour, or being down in the dirt developing repetitive strain injury in your mouse hand is something that makes people want to play the game.
 
And the PvP missions seem to be high risk, and not that big reward type of deals. And again, very time consuming so there is not only the quanta that is lost.
 

This is pretty obvious. Have you looked at the amount of data this game uses, it’s nuts. 
 
The hardcore players putting in serious serious hours will be using way more data than their sub covers, that’s if they are even paying subs rather than alpha supporters or using beta keys.
 
The causal player, well what is in it for them? 
 
You cant have a cool ship with causal mining hours.
You can’t afford the schematics for a sweet industry playing causally.
You can’t be anything but a victor playing PvP casually.
 
So there is the problem, nothing to do if you are casual; vs costing more than you pay if you are hardcore. 
 
So yes, if it doesn’t find funding its doomed.
 
What they should do if they get more time?
 
My opinion is...
Mining, make surface gathering with talents as profitable as underground mining, less holes, less database.
Minng machines you can leave on your Sanctuary plot and anywhere you expand to. Not a high cost tire four machine, but something that the casual can afford so when he comes back each session he has some ore to play with, be it market, industry, etc.
 
Industry, allow usage of an industry to slowly earn you points towards a new schematic, so more ways than just quanta to get them.
Have missions where refine 100 pure carbon, make 10 basic connectors, create 100,000 Advanced electronics. Something that industry guys can actually make money from if they aren’t 5/5 in the entire production line.
Have it so player skill and not just talents make a difference to profit. 
 
PvP, first make it more interesting.
Next, arena combat. You can bring your own ship it suits the level conditions or use a stock ship. Winner gets coin, loser gets practice. Neither lose or take real damage to their ship. Make it that if you don’t have a ship, but have it’s blue print you can use that.
This let’s casuals get in on the action. It lets all players get some experience rather than the hard perfect or dead world of current PvP.
 
Those are my ideas. They could cut and paste them into an announcement and say this is our roadmap for the next three months. If they did they’d be idiots and probably only make me happy.
 
Hire some professionals in game theory, game loops. If they really are trying to make a EVE/Space Engineers hire sme experts in both games to work out their best features and how they could be blended.
 
Talk to your coders, get a project manager and determine what would be cool, vs what is actual possible.
 
Talk to the community more. I don’t care if your say we only had two coders this week as we haven’t paid the others. One showed up Monday but come lunchtime threw his coffee at the screen and walked out, while the other has been head down butt up working but every ten minutes starts swearing in some unknown language about darn voxel correction. Tell us something.
 
Don’ts
Don’t push something out before the 17th unless it’s ready, it will probably cause more harm that good.
Don’t release cool videos of the games to attract new players if the videos don’t actually reflect the current state of the game.
Don’t keep going the way you are, I don’t think it is working.
and most important Don’t listen to me, I don’t know how to make a computer game.