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killthrush

Alpha Tester
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  1. Like
    killthrush reacted to Gottchar in Demeter 0.27 Release - Discussion Thread   
    So while I am unable to log in anyway, here my thoughts about Demeter so far:
     
    -Mining units are fine for the most part, it would be nice if charge gain and calibration loss was both halved, just so that you dont have to log in every single day. We all know I will anyway, but the game shouldnt persuade you that hard.
     
    -Headquarters are nice enough, it will just take a week or two for people to finally understand the concept "you still have to pay to have machines active, it is just immune to loss".
     
    -I have noticed no difference regarding loading times or other benefits of the dirt reset, but plenty of other people are amazed they can now "VR someplace, or use scanners, like other people can". I wasnt even aware it was so shit for some others.
     
    -Was still not able to find the "element overlapping" sign anywhere.
     
    -But I do now have some weird bar across the minimap, even outside build mode, is that it? ?
     
    -You got rid of mass info while flying, I liked checking my total cargo there, when I forgot to long to container or just have multiple hubs. This is not even in the patch notes, was it on purpose?
     
    -I dont see updates on the updated roadmap.
     
    -Not sure what rendering change there is to industry units, I had a good look when restart machines for 4 hours after the downtime, but they are still the same. And still show the wrong light colours and like to just get fucked all the time.
     
    -Force field change is nice.
     
    -Underwater landing is even harder now, because water is muddier.
     
    -Most of the "UI" polish is hard to judge without direct comparison, I really cant tell.
     
    -Space fuel XS, nice.
    -
    Mining unit collision is massively bigger a few seconds after deploying. So if you place a few, you then have to rearrange them so they dont overlap.
     
    -Added "view market page"! Hell yes, thx guys, I think most people didnt even notice this one yet. 
     
    -People who made DSATs had their 60M schematics turned into 3M schematics without compensation. 
     
    -People who owned DSATs, had their 16M items turned into a 1.7M item, with no compensation. 
    Instead of just introducing a new basic DSAT that only works on basic and common asteroids. Solving the same issue, but without fucking some people over.
     
    -VR-mission change: There are two kinds of people (with some overlap) who do the big moneymaker missions.
                       Car-pool guys, where 20 people VR to one guy with a ship to take and turn in the mission.
                       Alt guys, where a guy and his 20 alts do the mission.
    The car pool guys at least did something that, while imbalanceds in the game, was in theory available to everybody, you got rid of that. The Alt guys can continue unhindered. Why not use one of the working solutions?
     
    -Weapon changes: Nobody bloody cares. 
    I did the extremely hard math and found out that there are more engines in use than weapons, why not balance those for once? Just put pvp balancing on ice for now, it is a bottomless pit for dev time in some dirty shitcorner of the game most people dont visit anyway.

    -Plenty of DC, lag, prolonged wait time, inability to log in, which I guess goes away in a day or two anyway.

    Can you please hire a guy with the only job being to point out how something might be shit?  This game has issues, you come up with solutions, those solutions however often are flawed and turn out worse than the issue they try to fix. The dedicated "pointing out how this could be shit"-guy, would help.
     
  2. Like
    killthrush reacted to NQ-Abu in Welcome our new CEO   
    Hi Noveans,
    Thanks for the warm welcome! Since I've joined I've been amazed by the incredible job the Novaquark team is doing, working hard on delivering the dream of Dual Universe. I’m also very impressed by how you, our community, have been supporting the DU project from day one. Let's all keep moving forward together!
    Cheers,
    Nouredine
  3. Like
    killthrush reacted to Deathknight in Call for Demeter-related questions   
    @NQ
     
    Please reconsider ending this testing session on early Monday morning. This test is extremely important and the players that are committed to thoroughly exploring the jns and outs of this change were given several obstacles to contend with.
     
    First, many players have been dealing with the geometry reset. My base is underground and I needed to spend a good amount of time to just asses to the impact to my area and reach my linked containers.
     
    Next, there was the utterly incomprehensible decision to test a change to airbrakes simultaneous to the actual Demeter testing. Experimenting to discover what will and won't obstruct brakes so that I can just fly mining units somewhere is crazy to ask in such a short timeframe. 
     
    Lastly, consider the full lifecycle of operating a mining unit. Calibrate to get it running, then recalibrate as the percentage gets low. Well you have a 48 hour cooldown on calibrations for a test that spans only a weekend.
     
    This entire test seems to be more of a formality than a legitimate exercise to assure the quality of the product and give players a chance to provide meaningful feedback. 
     
  4. Like
    killthrush reacted to blundertwink in INSIDE NOVAQUARK: DEMETER EDITION - Discussion Thread   
    IMO, the game is a lot closer to release than people might think. Months, not years. 
     
    Demeter will (supposedly) allow them to scale, the next updates will focus on first time user experience, then it will be maybe a few iterations on polish, PvP, and bug fixes before they slap a "release" label on it. 
     
    Be realistic: a company with 50+ employees and two offices, negative revenue, very little customer growth, and an investor as CEO....is not going to wait until the game is "finished" to release. 
     
    Huge changes like this are definitely 'VERY ALPHA'...but tbh I feel it is driven by a financial need to release above everything...Demeter will fundamentally change the math on affordability and revenue per customer, which matters when you're about to scale up (or try to do so, anyway). 
  5. Like
    killthrush reacted to Ghangi in INSIDE NOVAQUARK: DEMETER EDITION - Discussion Thread   
    In the video you can see that each of your territories has a wallet that the fees will be withdrawn from. If there's no quanta in the account, then it goes through the different stages of non-payment.

    So, to answer the other person's question, it does look like you'll be able to prepay some amount of your territory's fees.
  6. Like
    killthrush reacted to BlindingBright in INSIDE NOVAQUARK: DEMETER EDITION - Discussion Thread   
    it's literally STILL listed as an alpha in windows uninstaller. PTS though is that beta is fire. This was just screen capped- and fresh. DU is by definition still alpha  
  7. Like
    killthrush reacted to Zarcata in INSIDE NOVAQUARK: DEMETER EDITION - Discussion Thread   
    Actually, by definition, it is an alpha.
  8. Like
    killthrush reacted to Novean-32184 in Demeter will probably Kill the game if it goes to live servers..   
    The irony of this image probably eludes NQ ..
  9. Like
    killthrush reacted to bleakcon in Laughing so hard @DU Market   
    Maybe that needs to change, perhaps we should have a mechanic that allows for deconstruction of items to their base ores with some loss. That way people can sell below market price all they like (probably the crowd that mines their own ore....so you know, the ore is free right  ) can do that but those who notice this trend can take advantage of it
  10. Like
    killthrush reacted to Hazard0814 in Laughing so hard @DU Market   
    I just thought I'd bring  up the idea that some people are under valuing their own product to sell things, in any free market I can understand prices being low, but lower than resource cost. You'd show those finances to any company that exist and they'd either have a heart attack or start laughing at you. Not insulting anyone obviously, just sharing a point I do not see posted on the boards in regards to the market.
  11. Like
    killthrush reacted to Hazard0814 in Laughing so hard @DU Market   
    I was bored, a friend wanted to have me make something for them. So I charged them the price it would be for just the ore to be used. Then I looked at market, and like most thoughtful people, nearly died laughing as I saw element after element being sold, cheaper than the ore to make it. Which honestly seems a bit backwards as the "Bots" everyone so heavily hates, do nothing but create a "Floor" price for ores and an outlet for people to sell to when no one else is buying at above bot prices.
     
    Then I checked the price of bot sell orders, NQ drop the price please, give it a margin of 10-15% profit instead based on the cost of the ore for it if your going to set floor pricing, it makes sense. Then also, like I mentioned on another thread, make it easier to see the base value of something based on ore cost, not everyone wants to research the cost of something outside of the game. 
     
    Just my two cents in beta ✌
  12. Like
    killthrush reacted to helvetian in Demeter will probably Kill the game if it goes to live servers..   
    As someone focused on building, not making money, I definitely support the idea of creating an option for people to own a tile just to build on, or even just to preserve it. As an example, I have claimed a ring of territories around a central territory I am building a city on, just to create a buffer zone that prevents other players from building too close to the city. Simply getting together the money to maintain these seven tiles would force me to spend a lot of time playing money-making activities such as delivery missions and asteroid mining. Not a fan of that idea at all.
     
    I like Ruges' idea with taxation based on tile use.
     
    I'm also totally on board with deleting old scanner results, or at least not having them show the "new" ores. Besides the obvious issue of scan collectors having a huge advantage when it comes to ore hunting, there's no logical explanation for the old scanner results (that might have been taken a year ago) to suddenly become up-to-date when they didn't refresh before.
  13. Like
    killthrush reacted to Deathknight in Demeter will probably Kill the game if it goes to live servers..   
    Much like Helvetian, I have done the same thing, where I claimed tiles around where I was building for a buffer. I do also perform money making activities in the game, but I have claimed tiles just for their natural beauty and then build on them. It would be a shame to just give these tiles up because they are not profitable.
     
    Taxes in real life are based on the assessed value of the land and the zoning of said land. There should be an option to own land without mining.
     
    I also feel that the adjacency bonus, while a good mechanic for auto-mining, is contrary to the goal of creating cities and empires in the game. If players are encouraged to claim land in clumps of tiles, we won't connect together as the game world grows. In many areas this won't be an issue, but on Alioth, Freeport, some places on Madis, I could see this being a problem.
  14. Like
    killthrush reacted to SevSaint in Money Sink   
    Ways people are generating money. AI missions or daily log ins. Eventually due to log ins and player count there will be trillions of quanta. Without things like market tax, and schematics there is no money sink to kind of keep the market for exploding in inflation. Consumable things aren't really sinks. Scrap, for instance, doesn't really sink money. It just transfers from player to player and the said player gets rich by selling scrap. The market is just constant transferring of money from player to player and the only loss is the tax system.  There needs to be more sinks in place to prevent huge amounts of inflation. With the introduction of the AI missions players can farm money adding to the collective players wealth which in the long run will cause prices to soar. For instance, if the market had another item bought that wasn't from players but AI and was consumable and needed then players would cycle money out of player to player exchanges and slowly balance things out. Eve had several sinks. One of which was the insurance of ships. You got a portion of the money back in value of the ship but not as much. The parts lost had to be replaced which had to be remade. I can see huge issues down the road if the market isn't better handled by the devs now. 
  15. Like
    killthrush reacted to blazemonger in Trade, transparency and trust   
    Calls for an overal API for not just markets but also player info have been made since alpha started. Only on the recent Discord AMA has JC said that a Market API will possibly be coming.
    It will be interesting to see how this will be implemented and I really hope NQ will talk to use before they do and not just doe "something" and implement some half baked version as they have show a pattern of doing.
     
    And API can ever only be exposing character data, never any data relating to the account. The character info is pure in game data and not personal, the account data would be.
  16. Like
    killthrush reacted to NQ-Deckard in INSIDE NOVAQUARK: DEMETER EDITION   
    Members of the Dual Universe dev team joined forces to talk about Dual Universe’s next update, Demeter, which focuses primarily around mining. 
     
    In this vlog, you’ll meet: 
    NQ-Sesch, General Manager of Novaquark-Montreal NQ-Kyrios, Creative Director NQ-Entropy, Game Designer NQ-Sirg, Technical Director NQ-Deckard, Live Ops Specialist  
    Topics include:
    How we're implementing a new voxel grid on planets called hexoctrees, which will significantly decrease database costs and improve performance for players. The fundamental changes to mining, including the removal of underground ore, how mining units work and how their efficiency can be optimized. How the management of territories is impacted with the introduction of monthly ownership fees among other changes. How these changes include a reset of the planets’ geometry and the potential impact on some players with underground bases. How Novaquark is trying to help such players ahead of the launch of Demeter.  
    To allow players the opportunity to see and experience these changes first-hand, including the effects of the geometry reset on their constructs, the public test server will be available soon with a preview of Demeter. The PTS will host a fresh copy of the database from Live so that all of your inventory and constructs will be waiting for you there . 
     
    We highly encourage DU community members to watch the vlog and join us on PTS to try all the things. Questions or comments about the vlog? We have the perfect place for those on our forum. 
     
  17. Like
    killthrush reacted to joaocordeiro in Why should i play this game?   
    Its not up to us to convince you to play the game. If you cant find a reason on your own, dont play. 
  18. Like
    killthrush reacted to Dakanmer in Lighting changes   
    I'm sure it's been beat to death with a herring, but lighting. NQ's intentions were good with trying to make things less stressful flying at night and dark places, but they made it pointless to have lights regardless of environment. So here's my idea:
    Scale back the ambient lighting, or remove it entirely and give us a "night vision" mode on our super-advanced suits (that also apparently keep us fed, breathing, sane from lack of sleep, etc), and then improve the ability of lights to actually produce light over a longer range (without bleaching through walls or the ground).
     
    Explanation:
    As described above, lights are pointless regardless of environment. You don't need a flashlight when mining anymore; the pitch indicator is great, but you can't see it so easy with the flashlight on, especially in brighter soils. You don't need light elements on your constructs anymore. Lights can help better pinpoint your construct in space or dark soils, but we now have luminescent white (but no other color. Much sad face) voxels for that, so they are completely unnecessary. Whether you are underground, on the surface, hiding deep in a labyrinth of corridors and rooms in your construct, in a panic room in your super destroyer in space, or anywhere else, the sun bleaches through and lights your surroundings enough to see everything as though it was at least an overcast/rainy day, even giving a sun "reflection" on any surface that is ~orthogonal to it (this is especially annoying in space, when I'm pointing directly away from the sun and getting glare in my piloting cabin that makes my transparent screen unreadable...and yeah, I could make it a normal screen, but stop making excuses for problems. That translucent screen is in front of the forward window so that I can see where I'm going and watch important stats, and smaller screens out of my direct field of view get blocked by the default UI). Added to that, you see the reflection of the nebula wherever you are, whether above ground, km below with no sky access, or in your labyrinthine constructs with no outside visibility, which completely throws off aesthetics. (Want a mirror in your bathroom? Too bad, it's a viewing portal to space!)
    The overall effect is that there might as well be no night or day, but a constant bleh of medium-to-high lighting differences. There might as well be no lights, as well, no matter how deeply you dig or how thick and dark your walls.
     
    Justification and response:
    Some people have said they love the change because of night flying and trying to find space stations in the dark. I hate to be "that guy," but get over it. Night time and space are dark. That's why we invented lights, and that's why we invented night vision systems (like "thermal" and "infrared" goggles/cameras). The nebula is great and adds lots of flavor to the place, but it shouldn't be so pervasive that you can see it reflected anywhere at any time on most semi-reflective+ surfaces, nor should it light up the solar system. At most, it should provide aesthetic value and contrast (like in space, contrasting your ship against the void). Similar with the sun, it shouldn't be reflecting off anything on the other side of a planet and inside a fully enclosed room. Improving the ability of lights to perform their intended function, and giving a toggled night vision system, would make night and space flying doable without detracting from the game's realism or aesthetics, and complaints about such a change would become void; best of both worlds.
     
    Others have suggested similar ideas, but it can't be overstated how much the new lighting has adversely impacted gameplay. Some people are happy because they can see at night and in space, but they should have been asking for improvements to physical lights and a night vision toggle system for your suit (and learning important lessons about the dangers of night time/space navigation, and the need for quality lighting/detection elements/systems, like telemeters that have longer ranges to allow for coders to create LiDAR programs), not cheering for something that is a massive eyesore and big inconvenience for those of us who respect the psychological, aesthetic, and logistical impacts/aspects of darkness. (Want to build an escape scenario that is spooky? Hard to do when you can see EVERYTHING with only weaksauce shadows.)
  19. Like
    killthrush reacted to Mucus in recycle elements & Materials   
    Provide an option to recycle elements & materials back to their sub components ore's. Each time would reduce the amounts returned as a cost of processing. Perhaps this might require equipment or skills to drive  performance levels.
  20. Like
    killthrush reacted to NQ-Nyzaltar in DevBlog: Monetization, player happiness and economic viability   
    (Posted Friday 8th of April 2016 on the DevBlog)        Today, we want to share with you our view on a delicate topic: how we plan to monetize our game. Monetizing an online game is a difficult exercise: if it's not profitable, it dies quickly. If it's overpriced, it turns off players and the game dies as well. Adding the fact that there is no monetization model fitting perfectly for every type of game and this can give a quite serious headache to make it right, even when the guys in charge have experience in the field. Finding the adequate equilibrium is never easy. We have given a lot of thoughts on the topic, collected feedback from the community and listed a number of related critical points and checked how each model is adapted for each of them. We wanted to share our conclusion with you.   Being able to play the game without spending money   Nowadays, this is an unavoidable topic when it comes to start playing a new game. This is something everybody would appreciate. It's possible in some context, but there is always some inconveniences to balance it. But let's see how each model can answer to this point:   Free to Play (F2P)

    This model has been created around this very idea. It gives the opportunity to gather a bigger community and it becomes easier for players to find people to play with. However, it is very difficult to apply it flawlessly, and it's not always a fitting model for a game for many reasons, as you will see below. Buy to Play (B2P)

    This model is completely the opposite. Even if sometimes you can test for a very short amount of time the game (limited in game time and/or gameplay), a player will have to pay the whole game at some point, and it might be a paywall that turns off players with a low budget.
      Pay to Play (P2P)

    This model has evolved through the last decade and yes, it has become possible to play a game for free with a P2P model in its latest form, where the subscription fee can be optional. This evolution have already been successfully implemented by major MMO games, in particular Eve Online (the PLEX system) and it's the one we are interested in. How is this possible? In any MMO community, there are generally two player categories: those with a small/tight budget for games but a lot of free time and those who have a limited time to play games but a significant budget for them. Many activities in a MMO require a significant amount of in-game money. Acquiring a large sum of in-game money takes time. Players with a limited game time generally want to skip that step if they can. The system offers them to buy a token worth a monthly sub and trade it with  another player for in-game money. Players with a low budget for games can play for free if they invest enough time in the game and gather a large amount of in-game money to buy a token from a player selling one. As there is also a free trial period, a player who is really active may gather enough in-game money before the end, and continue to play without having to spend a cent. Basically, this is the reward for contributing to the in-game Economy. Everybody wins.     Responsibilizing players for their actions   Most of the players interact nicely between them without feeling obligated to do so but a small part always like to cause trouble (especially harassment or cheating), just to annoy other people or to gain an unfair advantage. In general, the Terms of Service (ToS) and more specifically End User Licence Agreements (EULA)  exist for the troublemakers. To discourage them to generate chaos in a community, the rules put in place need to be efficient, and all models are not equal in this regard.  
    Free to Play 

    This is one of the biggest weakness of the F2P model: Most of the troublemakers are players who do not spend money in the game. As they haven't spent any money, they generally don't care if their account(s) are banned. They just have to recreate new ones and can continue with the same behavior.
      Buy to Play 

    In a B2P structure, a player wanting to make trouble will think twice before creating disorder in the community, if their account can be banned and they lose the money they invested to  buy the game. Of course, this won't make such behavior disappear completely. There are still a few people who will behave badly no matter what, but most troublemakers will refrain themselves if they have something to lose.
      Pay to Play 

    On recent P2P games some features are locked on trial accounts (especially features that could be abused to gain advantages with an unlimited number of accounts or harass other players). Once the player has invested a significant amount of time in the game or paid for it, they are no longer in trial mode. Hence if the player start a ruckus, they have something to lose.     Getting a high-quality Customer Support   For a MMO game, Customer support is an important aspect that can make the difference between a player who stays and a player who leaves. Customer support is there to help players to solve any problems they have, be it a bug (in which case CS transmit it to the devs), a question, or a conflict with another player. Again, all monetization models are not equally designed to handle the task.   Free to Play 

    F2P games usually have a number of players far more important than the size of the customer support team can handle. The size of the customer support team is dictated by the global income of the company, where the size of the community is not. This tends to degrade the quality of the support, as trade-offs have to be made to handle the increasing number of requests.
      Buy to Play 

    Due to the fact that each player must pay for the game, the customer support team will be able to better manage the number of requests they have from the community as a part of the money coming from each sale can be allocated to financially support the customer support team. However, for an MMO (for which we can hope a very long life, like a decade or even more) this might cover the first years but after that, the situation will be the same as the F2P game, where the sustainability of the game will rely only on the players spending in a possible Cash Shop, unless a paid DLC or expansion system is put in place to generate revenue.
      Pay to Play 

    This is the only long-term, healthy way to support financially high quality Customer Support. If budgeted well, the Customer Support team should be proportional to the size of the community and should be able to handle all players without prioritizing or favoring some players before others. Having a regular income is justified for permanent Customer Support. It's also true for other production costs like, for example, server maintenance (some MMO games have cheap server maintenance costs while other have expensive ones. It all depends on the amount of computation power needed on the server side. And on a game like Dual Universe, it will be far from trivial. This is the drawback for handling technological challenges).   So what's the conclusion?   We have synthesized a bit all the things that were taken into account, but you have here all the main reasons why we are aiming toward a Pay to Play model. In a nutshell, here's what we have planned: Free Trial period: between 2 and 4 weeks. Monthly subscription (optional with a PLEX-like system) Possible (cosmetic only) Cash Shop. If deployed, we will make it in order that every month, players who have paid a subscription will be able to get some cash shop items for free.   Of course, we will remain open to discussion on this topic like any other: don't hesitate to give us your feedback on the Social Media and/or on the forum!   The Novaquark Team.
  21. Like
    killthrush reacted to Kurock in Bounty System: fun, fair and less abusable   
    While the other suggestions are good, this one is golden.  Added. Also it answers Lethys's question to an extent.
  22. Like
    killthrush reacted to Haunty in Regarding the bounty system   
    For me the main thing is how to prevent players from collecting their own bounties from a friend. Maybe if you could limit who can claim the bounty to specific individuals or orgs.
  23. Like
    killthrush reacted to Sybily in Bounty / Commission / Quest board   
    Absolutely disagree. Doing so would not allow meaningful emergent gameplay. If the game/NQ does this then there is no incentive for players to do it. What would be the point of organizations to focus on security or other government structures if the game gives it away for free? There aren't many companies in real life that sell air to breath because there's near infinite supply, thus no demand. The point of emergent gameplay is to give purpose to the things you do. There will be no purpose for a kind of government focused organization to exist if the functions are already provided by the game.
    It would be inaccurate to think that player based enforcement mechanisms would be less effective than one built in game because players can offer a human touch, whereas game logic cannot. Sure a finite number of things can be enforced by the game but there is no way game logic could possibly understand abstract/complex kinds of contracts/quests that players might come up with. 
  24. Like
    killthrush reacted to DarkHorizon in Physical financial securities   
    Sounds like another thing to steal...
     
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