Bobbie

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First attempt at trying something outside the norm when it came to space ships, and decided to make my land speeder look like an actual old wooden boat that had been ugraded with a few minor techonlogies.
 
I hope you like it.
 
 

I joined the game on 24th of Sept.  They have very generously given me an extra month too.  
Whilst I'm frightened by the new patch I definitely believe its necessary.  I also believe that the game will need more massive rebalance patches in the future especially once PvP gets going.
The way I see it the game is still in an alpha state.  Its been sold as beta so people have beta expectations.  IMO it wont be out of alpha until territory atmo warfare is launched. Which if le-souriceau post is right wont be for 7 or 8 months.  That is when I think a lot of players would return or join for the 1st time.  I don't think there is much point getting people back before then.  To sum up, the player base has dropped because people were sold beta but got alpha, so no point getting them back until its in a beta state.  Lets hop the money does not run out before then 

Well, that doesn't always relate to everyone else Bobbie. I am a beta subscriber, a couple of my new friends playing too, and we would be extremely sad if they 'shut down this shit show' tomorrow.
 
Please let us keep playing. The projects we are working on are fun and to lose all that work now would be horrible.

DU was meant from the beginning to be EVE + Minecraft, so it makes sense for it to have that kind of economy system. The economy will find its new balance and the game will work better than before. I understand that in a way these limits can be annoying, but it's the price to pay to have the economy and the emergent gameplay running. Without specialization the economy simply doesn't work.
 
True, the problem aren't the changes themselves but the fact that there are a lot of features missing and players are left with very few choices

So, you want to copy EVE Online and move your industry to a schematic production model, fine. A couple of salient points.
 
1/ EVE has a massive missioning system that gives pilots a wide array of possible paths to take, DU has mining ore and building a small factory set up....... cool (so lets remove 50% of that, players have far to much too do)
 
2/ EVE has a vast array of ships and items produced by players and corps available from go, DU has flying coffins built with a bent nail with a rubber chicken for a hammer...... cool
 
DU is not ready for a schematic based production system, it has many systemic issues to solve first. Don't get me wrong, i am enjoying it atm but, but. Your about to destroy a months work and make my small factory set up worthless and give everything to the massive cash grab groups who are only going to dominate more. Not sure i'll be playing in the medium term, there's very little player engagement as it is and your about to remove 75% of that for most players.
 
Good Luck
 

Hi NQ
 
Nobody can dispute making everything in megafactories was too easy, linear, and out of balance. But there are so many issues with your approach to fix it.
 
 
PROBLEM 1) You are putting yourselves in quite a position with treating the game as a beta and non-beta whenever it works. On one hand, with the promise of keeping our wealth into the release, we're expected to treat the game as it's an actual launch to compete with other players and organizations. But then there is no support, mechanics can change dramatically, etc. You're also putting at least a 6-months gap between those who could exploit the unbalanced mechanics early and accumulate wealth, and those who couldn't.
 
SOLUTION: I don't really have a solution to this. Perhaps the best way to operate right now is to announce a full wipe at the end of beta if you can financially handle it.
 
 
PROBLEM 2) This update leaked to lots of people for several weeks. The knowledge put those people further ahead.
 
SOLUTION: Either enforce your NDA, or do not disclose (economically sensitive) details of how you'll change things.
 
 
PROBLEM 3)  Completely unhelpful talents just to unlock elements are a bad idea. Eve Online learned this lesson over the years and they are doing away with artificial prerequisites to start playing the game. Industry is one of the rare domains where talents actually GREATLY matter. Most production will eventually become unviable overtime without respective talents. It's bad analysis if you thought the lack of talents was an issue.
 
SOLUTION: If you want to wall element usage behind talents, you should do so behind the existing talents. This way at least people get a benefit alongside element access. A sense of actual progression and no waste of days of training.
 
 
PROBLEM 4) I am quite worried whether the game actually has enough quanta supply recipes for sufficient production.
 
SOLUTION: The game needs isk faucets besides the honeycomb NPC order businesses. I have low-cost proposals for that in the idea box.
 
 
PROBLEM 5) Machine-based recipes create lots of issues. It'll be quite tedious to teach the recipes to every single element and to keep tabs on them even in non-megafactories. Moreover, how will our investments be saved? I hope (but am not certain) the recipes will be saved under "dynamic properties" of a machine. But then we won't be able to deploy the same factory from a blueprint. It'll be impossible to move factories. So you're not only investing in the machine, but also in the location of the factory. That'll have even greater repercussions with territory warfare. 
 
SOLUTION: You should have at least made the recipes character-based. Given that you don't tolerate account sharing and ban those who do, this would still achieve specialization, yet make it way less tedious.
 
 
PROBLEM 6) Cost is an artificial and unsustainable way to motivate people to specialize. Once people accumulate enough capital, megafactories will begin popping again. Then those who can afford them will be miles ahead of others.
 
SOLUTION: To achieve truly sustainable differentiation and specialization, there needs to be differentiation in the ways the source materials are acquired. Ore is equally available to every individual. It should take organizational level effort to access some building materials; it should take outside-the-box intelligently developed systems to access others. Moreover, it should make more sense to make one product somewhere and to make another elsewhere (geographically). 

Make the game fun again!
 
Mining endlessly and then waiting days or weeks for one component to cook is unacceptable and made me quit recently.
 
Fuel usage is also ridiculous.
 
Components are too big.
 
How to fix these issues:
- Add some kind of mining laser for ships so we can mine veins fast.
- Reduce time to make components.
- Make fuel more affordable, people living on Alioth are spending more ore to fuel than crafting. Fuel should be very easy and cheap to craft, even rocket fuel since we're using 1000x more rocket fuel for one trip.
- Balance components so we don't need so many for one ship. Ships look like pill of elements.

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