GraXXoR

Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall there used to be something along the lines of a community page in the old days....
 
Probably no longer worth taking the last remaining dev off of of his super important pet duty to fix a feature for us dozen remaining website users ...
 
ok, I'll admit, I'm getting a bit too cynical.

Dear Noveans, 
 
We have made some changes today on the forum. Here are the most noticeable changes to make our communication more straightforward with the Community and help the new players: 
 
We separated Forum Rules and Announcements forum sections. There will soon be more threads in the Forum rules section to clarify some topics like Forum Warnings policy and a few other things. Players will now have the opportunity to reply and give their feedback directly in the Announcements forum section. This will prevent doubling the number of threads each time there is a need for feedback to an announcement. Warning: many announcements threads will be unpinned very soon, so don't be surprised if an old announcement thread will NOT appear at the top of the list in this forum section. Remaining pining threads will be either about recent announcements or old important announcements that are still worthy of being pinned. A full New Player Landing Zone, divided in 4 forum sections (Help forum section, FAQ forum section, Gameplay Tutorials and New player introductions. A few new forum sections in the General Category, dedicated to specific themes. The Gameplay Mechanics Assembly forum section will be closed soon. In the future, please use the new forum sections for specific topics. The "Idea Box" forum section will be closed soon as well: we thank you for all your input and ideas you have shared with us. However, right now, we already have a (very) long list of things that we want to add to the game. It doesn’t make much sense to ask for more suggestions and keep this section open for now, as we won’t be able to allocate much time for new ideas in the near future and may give the feeling that the team doesn’t listen to the Community. So we prefer to close it at the moment, and reopen it later when the developer team will have some bandwidth to take into consideration new ideas. You’re still more than welcome to share your feedback and suggestions on what to improve among the already existing features in the game in the thread dedicated to specific features! The opening of a PvP forum section. Please be aware that it’s an experimental section, so the rules about it may change quickly if needed and please try not to abuse the already more flexible rules for this section. French forum sections have been merged into one for the time being, due to limited activity. We might redevelop a few sections in the future, depending of the needs German forum sections have been merged into one for the time being, due to limited activity. We might redevelop a few sections in the future, depending of the needs Many Beta and Alpha sections have been archived, when they were not really active for at least a few months.
We hope you’ll enjoy this new layout! 
If you have any questions or comments about these changes, if you think there is a bug about some forum access or posting rights, please let us know!
 
The Novaquark Community Team.
 

making pve easier allows more people to want to take risk into the pvp area in which they can pvp a lot more
higher risk less people want to even touch pvp space because its too risky. Its hard enough as it is without alts but they see us as progressing too fast and it being too easy for us to build up which further limits the pvp gameplay side fo things.

so overall with them wanting to slow down the economy they are slowing down the pace people overall get into pvp and making the entree and consistency in the pvp field harder.
 
so we have 2 choices
either we can have a steady stream of income and constant pvp then have them add more game play pvp aspect like pvp space enemies and bosses that are strong then weaker ones you can choose to engage in pve space that give diff rewards far better in pvp space rewards
 
or we can limit flow of quanta into the game and slow down/limit pvp 

we can either make the game fun engaging consistent and industries turning, or we can make it far less fun dreadful and make pvp space feel too risky for many 
given the limitations

We can either further expand and diversify pvp or limit it and limit the player who get into pvp

If you give the bots dynamic pricing then how is that different from the buy orders players are placing which react to the economy by increasing or decreasing the buy price?  People would keep ore back when the price went down, knowing that it will rise again, and then sell into the high, knowing the price will then fall again.  But this is exactly the same as selling to other players who will do exactly the same thing (i.e. increase buy prices until the order fills).

If the problem here is that the buy orders are at D6 and not the market local to you then that sounds like a great opportunity for someone to make an ore hauling business.  You can post the sell orders and when the buy at D6 gets high enough it will be profitable for someone to take your sell order at the price you wanted and haul it to be sold.
 
I think the big problem with the player-driven economy is that it isn't really player driven at all.  We have a bunch of player driven bits but then we have a bunch of things like tile tax, mission money and ships at the UEF store which inject things at a constant level and do not change with the market at all.

IMO it would be a lot more interesting to make the *tax* respond to the market instead of just consuming quanta.  If bot orders are not injecting the quanta then there is less need to take it back out with tax, right?  We could make the TCU operate like an industry machine and tax can get paid with an item which gets crafted and put into a bay in the TCU.  Crafting would consume quanta (because schematics) but a big part of the cost would be resources.  Make it like Kergon where you can get tax tokens made from different ore types.  When the ore price drops you can make tax tokens cheaply, pushing the price of the ore due to demand.  Or people can just make tokens from what they get on the tile, meaning that a low ore price is less of a problem for paying the tile tax.
 
For missions, I think that should be part of the player economy too.  At the moment it just generates quanta and is completely outside the economy.  If too many people run a mission the reward doesn't change and there is no requirement for the missions to actually get run.  If nobody runs one of them the universe doesn't run out of anything.

I'd change it so missions pay, say, 20% in quanta and the rest in some sort of item.  Perhaps a plasma-like thing enabling certain items to be crafted?  Perhaps certain schematics cannot be researched and have to be gained by running particular missions (military versions of schematics perhaps, different mission package sizes for different item size schematics).  That way mission running becomes more dynamic -- the less frequently run missions could be the most valuable and certain missions will need running more than others to supply.

But I think this is too much work for NQ at the moment as they are busy finishing off the highly anticipated and massively game-changing dancing avatar and pet features ...

There's nothing wrong with liking this game -- games are even more subjective than movies or books, and people have wildly different opinions on those, usually without it becoming personal or hostile. 
 
So...having a different opinion doesn't automatically make someone all about "FUD" or "entitlement gaming". That makes your post sound a lot less "objective". 
 
Also, let's be real about what "objective data" means when we're talking about this game, because it's a fact that the Steam launch has gone very poorly.
 
On one hand, you say it's unfair to judge it so soon after release....but that's like saying it's unfair to judge a movie based on its release. Release time is when they should be getting a huge influx of players!
 
Release is when Valve gives every new product guaranteed impressions on their store (it used to be at least 1 million, unsure if that's still true) -- Steam watches the metrics and gives new products more and more visibility if they have better sales. Release is the most critical time for any game, but especially for an MMO. 
 
You seem to acknowledge that by pointing out that it's normal for MMOs to have large churn in month 1 or 2. This isn't actually the case with DU. 
 
With DU, there hasn't been a massive churn because there never was a big launch -- going from ~800 active players to <~400 is not a huge drop in absolute numbers.
 
There's a world of difference between that and something like New World going from ~800k to ~80k DAUs...yes, people talk a lot about how MMOs are dying all the time and certainly a lot of that is exaggerated BS, but that doesn't mean every claim of it is automatically wrong. 
 
Beyond Steam stats (literally the only objective data we have on player numbers), look at actual reviews -- the few gaming media outlets that bothered to review tend to give it around 60%. User reviews are similar.
 
To me, this means plenty of people do enjoy the game and plenty of people can see at least some positive elements of the game....but not in enough numbers to keep things moving forward, and not with enough month-to-month retention considering NQ's pace of updates. 
 
Of course that doesn't mean that anyone can know for sure that the servers will go offline, nevermind when...but trying to claim that the game is doing well and that Steam means nothing is really not a helpful or realistic perspective.
 
You certainly haven't presented any objective data to suggest that the game is growing outside of the largest PC gaming platform in the world. Nothing wrong with liking the game and wishing more players would give it a chance...but let's not pretend that DU will magically turn itself around by NQ staying the course and doing exactly what they are doing. 

I like the idea, but too hard to code for NQ.
If they try to implement that we will have the link container bug back...

If anything, the wipe has exacerbated the inequity. Those who learnt how to game the system after a year of NQ fakking everything up left-right-and-centre were ready to game from DAY ONE after the wipe and were on top of the world before other chumps were even off the planet.

Even our little, two-bit remains of Nova X has managed things that few noobs and even some other mid-tier players would ever be able to accomplish. We have magnified the distance between us and the tier of beginners who have likely, mostly already departed given the now 33% decline in monthly Steam numbers.
 
As an aside, three days ago, this decline was still 30% which means the last week has been A HARD DOWN on DU noob numbers, because, let's face it, few established players are going to move over to steam, we can be certain that most Steam players are noobolinas...
 
 

Sounds like good news, but NQ have lied so often, that I'll only believe it when I see it...
Should be gradiated, so that for a decent region around all the market places, limits are more like 256m... but then easing off every couple of hexes  until, say 20km away from marketplaces there is no limit, like it used to be.

LOL. Those are certainly (positive) words, OP. Believe it or not, I used to be positive back in the first alpha during the NDA period.  
 
but then i took an arrow to the knee. 
 
here are my experiences with the games I (con)currently play. 
 
NMS: can do MUCH more in game than a year ago. 
 
Star Citizen: can do much more in game than a year ago. 
 
Elite Dangerous: Can do a bit more in game than a year (well, Odyssey, 18 months) ago. But lost features such as VR and working resource gathering. 

cyberpunk: can do more in game than a year ago. Mostly massive numbers of bug fixes. 
 
stellaris: can do more in game than a year ago. Extra races features storylines. 
 
Cities Skylines: can do more in game than a year ago. New DLC every six months or so. 
 
DU: can do less in game than a year ago. Mining gone, whole planets gone… no DLC no new features, but we did get XS space fuel tanks. 
 
Spot the fundamental flaw in your argument yet?

That's just a bloop creating an L CORE schematic costs 725,000... A single core.
 
CREATING any L size LIGHT schem costs 37,500 JUST FOR A FKKN LIGHT!!! plus you have to make the T2 parts.
 
Given the atrocious lighting in this decade old graphics engine, we need about a dozen lights or more per core to keep things cheerful, which bumps a core price up by OVER 50% JUST FOR FKKN LIGHTS.
 
Basically the 100k daily stipend will pay for 2 lights max.  Imagine that!!! Lights in a game set 12,000 years in the future of matter replication and teleportation are a fkkn premier product.
 
This game is blowing more by the day. Any remaining respect I have for the creators of this debacle is rapidly heading south.
 
Also, speaking of fkkn joke income, 85 Tonne payload planetary missions with 600 ℏ per kilometre payout are a fkkn joke, too.

THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REAL LIFE!!! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A GAME.

What bothers me is that a player can say "only 5 characters, nothing silly"  and keep a straight face.
FML.

LOL. Those are certainly (positive) words, OP. Believe it or not, I used to be positive back in the first alpha during the NDA period.  
 
but then i took an arrow to the knee. 
 
here are my experiences with the games I (con)currently play. 
 
NMS: can do MUCH more in game than a year ago. 
 
Star Citizen: can do much more in game than a year ago. 
 
Elite Dangerous: Can do a bit more in game than a year (well, Odyssey, 18 months) ago. But lost features such as VR and working resource gathering. 

cyberpunk: can do more in game than a year ago. Mostly massive numbers of bug fixes. 
 
stellaris: can do more in game than a year ago. Extra races features storylines. 
 
Cities Skylines: can do more in game than a year ago. New DLC every six months or so. 
 
DU: can do less in game than a year ago. Mining gone, whole planets gone… no DLC no new features, but we did get XS space fuel tanks. 
 
Spot the fundamental flaw in your argument yet?

^^ This... NGL @Cergorach is basically 100%, acerbically correct...   If this were a 1990s fanzine run by university students spending half their time pissed and the other half high, it's exactly the sort of quality I'd expect...

but since this is supposedly a 21st century tech-based enterprise with multimillion investment, the investors must be absolutely livid with their fiscal OBLITERATION. They might as well have just taken he money outside and buried it in a landfill...

It's even worse than that. They actually posted to say that the calibration thing was not an exploit and was intended behavior of the mining unit. So they actually eased people's suspicions about it and told them it was fine.
 
NQ doesn't post often, but boy when they do....

Sounds like an NQ bot, but we know NQ never reads the forums, so this is likely a legit player... SMH
As with everything... ever... It's the trend that is far more important than the absolute figures.

That's just a bloop creating an L CORE schematic costs 725,000... A single core.
 
CREATING any L size LIGHT schem costs 37,500 JUST FOR A FKKN LIGHT!!! plus you have to make the T2 parts.
 
Given the atrocious lighting in this decade old graphics engine, we need about a dozen lights or more per core to keep things cheerful, which bumps a core price up by OVER 50% JUST FOR FKKN LIGHTS.
 
Basically the 100k daily stipend will pay for 2 lights max.  Imagine that!!! Lights in a game set 12,000 years in the future of matter replication and teleportation are a fkkn premier product.
 
This game is blowing more by the day. Any remaining respect I have for the creators of this debacle is rapidly heading south.
 
Also, speaking of fkkn joke income, 85 Tonne payload planetary missions with 600 ℏ per kilometre payout are a fkkn joke, too.

THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REAL LIFE!!! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A GAME.

Basically... but their initial idea was sound. and it showed promise after the kickstarter... I remember having a blast making my hovercraft fly when I first played in 2016 or whenever the first play session started.
 
I remember thinking I was cheating by putting the wings on the sides and flying OVER THE TREES.
 
such a sense of naughty trepidation was so intoxicating I upgraded to 300 dollar tier or whatever it was back then... Basically five Cyberpunk 2077s..

What bothers me is that a player can say "only 5 characters, nothing silly"  and keep a straight face.
FML.

There was a guy (presumably, don't want to be gender specific, LOL) on here saying..."why do you losers need bot ore sales? Once they started to run out, I simply turned to missions... I only have FIVE alts, nothing silly... and I'm made a 100 million..."
 
Five... Nothing silly.

This is the the sort of players this game is catering to, currently.
 

This game is absolutely r----d in that it doesn't even send a message that your ship is under attack but instead sends a generic... "Your primary container is now your nano pack" or some other equally fkkn stupid message.
NQ's likely retort: We've only had six years to get our shiit together, we need MOAR THYME.

DU has reduced me to sending memes.

If you're a new player or someone who has been here since the early release of Kickstarter we have all had a lot of setbacks so far. Too many to honestly post in a single thread here. Let it be clear, I absolutely love the "concept" of this game. But honestly with their latest changes since release and lack of communication throughout the entire process of this game I am seriously giving thought to just dropping it. 
 
The main reason to my thought of quitting is simply this. 
NQ wants us as players to create the content of this game however every time we try and create things they get taken away or the time gates get extended because NQ simply doesn't think we should have X items or X number of quanta yet in a game where THEY placed the mechanics to acquire them in such time. These types of changes should have been worked out in beta that WE PAID FOR. Doing changes like this in a released version of the game is unacceptable and I will not continue to pay into this. 
 
Secondly, NQ simply cannot and for some reason refuses to establish proper communication within the community with no proper layout for future updates or planed releases. They haven't even given us things they would like to implement to retain some of their player base with sheer interest and at this point they have removed more than they have put in. Not sure how they think this will work but my goodness they really need to pay attention to what's going on around them and the status of their own community, and to be clear it seems their communication has gotten worse and not better.

Also, as a side note, I have seen several instances where players who have been banned due to part of their ban wave of people who were "exploiting" and buying things from other players. The players that had no idea they were being sent money from the exploiter were getting banned as well. Without the opportunity to contest the ban and additionally no longer have access to their account to REMOVE their subscription and the ban process NQ has does not automatically remove the subscription so if you're not paying attention they will go ahead and charge you money for an account you can't even access.......I would consider this to be theft.
 
As for the T1 bots. Well, heh this is a fun topic. 
Bots should always be in the game to purchase excess ore period. These could easily be regulated by limiting the amount of sell orders they are willing to give players at a time. This is done all the time with dispensers so don't see why a similar implementation could be setup for bots.  Missions just don't do enough unless you are part of the wealthy who can afford multiple accounts. To establish a proper economy the bots shouldn't have a static pricing but a dynamic pricing that increases and decreases depending on what the economy is actually doing.   
 
The actual point of this thread is to bring light to potential players who are thinking about quitting the game and to post their frustrations as to why they might end up quitting. NQs job at this point needs to be more focused on player retention and getting new players into the game to secure funding for the future as well as introducing fixes and new content for players to actually have something fun to do vs spending their entire time just trying to pay for their tiles so they can make things.
 

I extended my main's subscription by a month via a Markee Dragon code so I'm not stuck with a recurring subscription. I was starting to get out of my DU rut, doing some calibrations, some cargo hauling, looking at my prices at M6 again and adjusting some (down), planning my next factory redesign (in PowerPoint), making plans. That was yesterday....
 
With the most recent 'announcement' I'm back at feeling negative about DU again. I don't hate that T1 bots are now gone, I hate how NQ is so gawddarned wishywashy!
 
At this point it just isn't that smart continuing playing working DU, I don't see DU existing for much longer (looking at concurrent players on Steam and the tile growth on Haven week by week). And even if there are some investors willing to continue dumping money in DU, I still have very little confidence in NQ that in another two years we wouldn't see another wipe... My issue is that I'm still not willing to completely let go of DU, is that having an addiction? Any other people having the same issue? That you know you should let go, give up and play something that is actually fun...

What someone else said, you shouldn't, unless you want to.
 
I've been struggling with that myself. I have four accounts, my main's subscription is lapsing on Monday and I'm considering not extending. The other three have longer (already paid for) subscriptions due to beta subscription issues on my main...
 
The last couple of weeks, constructing more stuff I just wasn't motivated for it. I was trying to keep my ~40 mining tiles up and running and have let that slip the last couple of weeks as well a few times... DU is a grindy time pit, that I'm redoing the same thing I already did the last couple of years in beta (a few times), rebuilding industry and infrastructure. It is boring and quickly losses my interest. And EVE Online (and other projects) have been gaining my interest...
 
What I've considered the last few weeks:
- Giving up completely on DU, it's a timesink that's not very fun a lot of the time and not very fulfilling. It's uncertain future also does not help.
- Just not extending my characters after the current subscription expires and just dip in once in a while when I feel the 'itch'. But that isn't a good idea because my unsubscriped characters will eventually go POOF(tm) and I would have to start from scratch again...
- Extend the subscription for a month and see if we have a good Blackfriday/Cybermonday/Holiday sale in the meantime. Where extending the accounts doesn't feel like throwing a lot of money in a pit, just a little money in a pit...
 
Ingame:
- Deconstruct the 40 mining tiles and put it all in storage.
- But what if they fix the mining pricing just or a few weeks after I put it all in storage?
- Rebuild the factory line again for more efficiency and expand what I build, but it's such a chore...
- Build a couple of ships and do something different in DU
 
Meanwhile it's not as if I have nothing else to do...
- EVE Online seems interesting again...
- I bought a ton of games during the sales that are actual fun to play...
- I have a very fun 3D printer kit (Voron 2.4 350) that takes 30-40 hours to build and would be actually interesting to build vs. redoing the DU factory again...
- Some other fun and interesting tech projects...
 
So yeah, it's actually difficult to let go of DU and in my case that might or might not happen shortly...
 
As for your specific issues:
a.) NEVER run pvp space missions during the weekend! Depending on your timezone, I already stopped running missions Friday afternoon (during beta) as some people pirates in other timezones already started playing. With the current player population, pirate population and only two pvp space planets I'm not even sure how safe pvp space is during the rest of the week, maybe I'll find out...
b.) Currently you can sell your ore at M6 for 13+q/L, all your 450k coal. Also, the weekend might not be the best time to sell as many people want to do the same.
c.) Why are you using 3 accounts to mine just a coal flower? My 4 accounts can optimally (and that might be something different from what you think it is) 'service' 225 auto miners (at max skills), with 3 per tile, that is 75 tiles. Trust me, that's a lot of work!
d.) Always check downtime announcements in the discord if you are doing time sensitive stuff, especially if you're cutting it close. They often do announce late, so you might be buggered either way... 😉
e.) If you're short on cash, do the 180k Alioth mission with you three accounts at the same time (540k per run). You can do that pretty cheaply in an expanded Apex (UEF ship), someone is/was also selling an lvl5 BPC version for it which helps immensely. Add a couple of containers to the hub to get the 30k storage you need for 3 accounts. You can fly the 'cheap' way through atmo, takes about 45 minutes to and from. Or you can do it way faster through low orbit, but that does consume T2 space fuel...
f.) You can mine the 'old' way, but only in asteroids. Might not be your thing, but I wanted to do that eventually as well.

That's just a bloop creating an L CORE schematic costs 725,000... A single core.
 
CREATING any L size LIGHT schem costs 37,500 JUST FOR A FKKN LIGHT!!! plus you have to make the T2 parts.
 
Given the atrocious lighting in this decade old graphics engine, we need about a dozen lights or more per core to keep things cheerful, which bumps a core price up by OVER 50% JUST FOR FKKN LIGHTS.
 
Basically the 100k daily stipend will pay for 2 lights max.  Imagine that!!! Lights in a game set 12,000 years in the future of matter replication and teleportation are a fkkn premier product.
 
This game is blowing more by the day. Any remaining respect I have for the creators of this debacle is rapidly heading south.
 
Also, speaking of fkkn joke income, 85 Tonne payload planetary missions with 600 ℏ per kilometre payout are a fkkn joke, too.

THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REAL LIFE!!! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A GAME.