Novean-32184

basically.. Territory warfare.. NQ promised it many times, said it would come this year in a video about a year ago and watered it down to "we will first experiment with it around stations" earlier this year beforew taking it off the table entirely and it has not been heard from since.

While good to see them again, and pretty much all of these sugegstions as good ones, suggestions like this have been made and discussed, some even promised ny NQ, several times over the last 4 years ever since players gained access to the game. Example is the microvoxel issue preventing remaval of a core, how hard can it be really to allow the option to trash anything linked to the core to clear it? If that is hard then NQ really has bigger issues. Mirrormode and painting suggestion were pretty much the first ones backers made back in 2017.

True.. It's why I absolutely expect there will be a wipe, mostlikely with talentpoints and normal blueprints returned (currency, schematics and scans will be lost), but NQ will not say it out loud in fear of losing the few active players they have left and I do understand that. As I expect that what NQ will eventually "release" is what really is the game in Beta state, a wipe at that time, or shortly before, just makes sense and will cleear all the old pain as well as open up the game for new players much more. Existing players wil have a massive advantage in having their talent points back in the ppol so they can instantly respec and blueprints are good to go. I would not really mind to see blueprints from before a wipe be deployable with just the required ore for it available. Otherwise you get the "I need my industry to get my elements to deploy my industry".. It also works around the problem where magic blueprints just restore the elements gained from exploits. you'll need the ore to get those elements back so effectively your exploit gains become a liability and possiblye very expensive.. Way back I actually suggested that deploying blueprints should require a core to be placed and the blueprints plus materials/elements needed added to the core, press a button and the core will build the construct. SImple solution, much cleaner IMO that then "this is only a placeholder" box we still have ever since the very first time blueprints were introduced years ago.

The fact they put "rumors of wipe" in there is hillarious

As was established some time ago and posted about, yes.

Yes, and unless they exclude orgs from getting access rights set on HQ tiles, what NQ says they wanted to prevent is precisely what will happen. I think that it's not so much a backlash against taxing on tiles but more the way NQ implemented it. And there is no tax free tiles here, HQ tiles still require tax to be paid to be "active", the difference is that if you do not pay taxes, the tile still goes inactive but you will not lose ownership.

For business Stripe is not exactly cheap. And XSolla was not a choice for NQ, it was a condition from investors early on as they have a stake in XSolla.

No, I agree that the scans removal was the right decision to make for a number of reasons. I've said that several times now.

"This feature is only available to player-owned, not organization-owned" implies that the HQ tiles are not intended for use by orgs and it makes sense to design it like that. NQ creates an exploit if they do not prevent that from happening anyway. The statement made by NQ as quoted above implies they should put measures in place to prevent this.

You are saying that it's fine if orgs can amass or at aleast have full access to hundreds of tiles where they only need to pay tax when the situation calls for it, including locking down tiles with specific ores or quantities of ores and only pay the tax if they need to mine these? IC could run their massive spaceport and never have to pay a cent in tax for the tile(s) they occupy with it and that goes for any large org infrastructure..

The HQ tiles will do the exact same thing unless these tiles can't have rights for orgs assigned to them

So what is stopping orgs from asking their members to set the org with full rights on such a tile and place it where the org asks in exchange for .. whetever possible incentive or just as a pre-requisite to join.

While I'm happy to see this made it into Demeter, unless a HQ tile can't have rights set to only individuals, they will be massively abused by orgs to have free, untaxed claims to build infrastructure and potentially lock up valuable tiles which wil only have taxes paid when it is time to restock on the ores found there. HQ tiles need to have severe restrictions on who or what can have access to the tile. Also, I feel that there shoudl be a limit of one tile per player per planet of this kind. I hope this is addressed before Demeter goes live @NQ-Deckard and @NQ-Sesch .. I fear that if that does not happen it will cause problems down the line. This is not something you'd want to "see what happens" with. Also I think that removing the increase in cost for each tile on the same planet is a mistake.. too many have too much money to spare for a number of reasons not related to normal gameplay and this will allow these individuals to claim tiles on a massive scale with little or no impact on their wallet.

I think a big part of the problems NQ has is that there is little or no central/common code used accross features or core abilities to share/pass data. Everything needs to be done separately which in part shows through the inconsistent and wildly varying UI/UX styles and implementations to the point where a UI panel can have two search boxes for the same functionn, yet both have a different way of working and react differently to user input.

From another game's devblog "First of all, we made a mistake with the roadmap where dates were way to optimistic which set the wrong expectations with the players" .. "this is not an excuse, we should have known better but this is how it happened" then provide a clear explanation on how you made the mistake and how you rectify it. Now, that is how you take ownership of what you do/did wrong.. No talking around the issue here..

I can agree with his comment pretty much 100% That said though, it basically explains WHY DU is in trouble. JC had a vision which, on paper, was really cool. He then went ahead and started work on implementing that vision but never did the things you mentioned " implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game". JC pretty much nearly drove DU (and with it NQ) off a cliff by ignoring feedback, by blindly following his vision, never questioning if what he was trying to achieve was actually doable and adjusting for what was possible instead of pushing what was not. It's been mentioned many times, but JC especially would just throw a "you do not understand" at any questions about his choices and decisions. He did so up to and including his last hooray almost a year ago in the "A Look Ahead" video. It was a massively overambitious list of things to come this year which was easily seen as a "wishlist of achievements" more than "this is what we can do". Basically, JC promised NQ would do more in a single year than they did in the 6 years prior with no sign of available funding and a dwindling player base. His stubborn mindset cost him is dream and his company. It remains to be seen if it cost us the ability to play a game with massive potential and promise.

Well, DU has a PVP element, it is not however a "PVP game" and was never intended to be. Tab target was always know to be a thing, inaccuracy and latency at distance as well (as quite clearly explained in the YT video on the server technology). The game has a built-in latency of 250ms as far as I recall from an earlier VLOG to maintain performance. I could see actual ping between you pressing a button and it happening on another players’ screen to be quite a bit longer, interaction server side being somewhere in the middle. I think that the core structure of the server tech simply will not allow for the type of PVP many are looking for and that would not be a problem is NQ was clear about this, worked within the constraints they have and not try and make you think they will/can work to improve this or market it for what it is not. Part of the communication problem with NQ is their eternal desire to sweet talk (potential) players, talk around what they know they can't do, not be clear and open about what they _can_ do and make that the best it can be.

Last I picked up on Discord, as I very briefly peeked in there and quickly closed that door again (brrr.. i really do not like DUscord much), was the plan is actually for next Tuesday. Personally I'd really like to see NQ postpone and get the HQ tiles in first as well as balance them so that orgs can't take advantage of their member's HQ tiles. Still, it feels like some sense of reason and care to not mess it up has entered the building at NQ and I hope it takes hold. We'll see..

But it does, not many MMOs where you can claim a good sized area, it's generally you just put a claim inside a building with a relative small "build" area, pretty much like the cores do. In any situation where there is larger swats of land or space it is always owned by an organisation, not by a single person. ANd that organisation pays upkeep, generally in the form of currency or through power management. Maintaining a station in EVE is not cheap, owning a system even less so. it's the same for other MMOs I know.. But feel free to let me know which specific MMO you'd refer to here.

Oh, NQ certainly can be blamed for a lot of this mess because of the muddy and "talk around the issue" style of discussion this. They have caused a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions about what they were going to do as they probably did not really know themselves yet. The last VLOG was pretty clear though even when they stopped short of making a firm statement on this then. I still expect them to bring in power management of sorts as it's really needed for the game and that will be the next big "surprise" which will have a deep impact in a lot of parts of the game. There are reasons why things like this need to come in early and then get tweaked along the way. If you bring it in for an initial version on a live game with paying customers, you will run into trouble. And yes, as @XKentX mentioned.. I fully expect a wipe as he described it above (everything goes away, you keep standard blueprints and talent points which go back into the pool). This patch would have been a good spot to do that, but I think NQ only wants to do it once and so choose to not pull that card just yet since there will me more "surprises" coming that also justify a wipe. I do not think it will be at release, it will be some time before release when NQ feels they reached a point where the game actually goes into beta and not just has the label attached. That should be a very different point compared to a year ago though and IF NQ is able to pull this around it may well be a good thing for the game and allow it to actually take off from there. But we'll see..

It was discussed when TU first cam into play and at several points in blogs and interviews with streamers shortly after beta launch. besides that, this is a sandbox MMO and upkeep, which can come in many forms, is pretty the norm and makes sense.

While mostly out of nessesity, I do not think that is an incorrect observation.

The forums are not tied to an active account in game and there is no reason for that to be the case. Same goes for Discord, both are public forums and NQ views them as a major channel for PR and marketing so that will not ever change. The notion that only active players would be entitled to leave feedback is silly.. this place would be dead overnight.

That is not how the investment type in play here works, this is venture capital which means that a group of investors puts money in a pool and back X project, expecting only a percentage o fthose to end up successful but to th extent that the gains from that will yield a profit AND cover the losses from the failed investments. So there is no direct exxpectation of recouping investment here even if that would be nice obviously. Also, I believe JC left for a number fo reasons, part of which being that he simply was not able to run the show and he came to the realisation that his vision was not going to be working out and di dnot want to mak ethe compromises needed to keep the compoany going The 22 million investment would need a _lot_ more than 200K subs to be quickly repaid if at the same time the company needs to keep the lights on and servers running. I'd expect it to be much more likely that he investors know and accepted this is a long term thing and they may get some money back on their investment over a 5-6 year run. I did run some basic calculations and came to the conclusion NQ needs about 50K active subs to pay their monthly cost, including staff. Anything above that would be profit. If they would manage to somehow hit 100K subs the might be able to pay back on the investment in the 5-6 years mentioned above without much of a profit. Just take CCP as an example, they have about 230K active subs, an active shop and a monthly revenue of around 5 million overall. EVE is a MUCH bigger game though and CCP employs a multitude of the staff NQ has, so running cost are higher. They own their own servers though and they have been running for many years now so cost there are probably relatively low and network traffic outside of their own cluster is relatively low actually, including player facing traffic. This data and the numbers are all public and can be verified if you'd want to. CCP actually did a 4 hour stream earlier this year with their networking/hardware team which was very interesting to say the least.

Actually, your Alpha and/or Beta keys are perks of the package, what you paid for effectively was a preorder of DAC ..