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Novean-32184

Alpha Tester
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Posts posted by Novean-32184

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 9 hours ago, Bobbie said:

    Their stated intention was to prevent infinite free tiles by infinitely nesting orgs.

    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.

     

     

    9 hours ago, Bobbie said:

    After the backlash against tile taxes, I find it hilarious that everyone is now suddenly concerned about too many tax-free tiles.

    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.

  4. On 11/17/2021 at 3:58 PM, blundertwink said:

    NQ can't even make their own billing platform using a product like Stripe (which has much lower fees than Xsolla)....what makes you think they have the time, energy, or will to implement something like this? 

     

    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.

  5. 5 hours ago, FryingDoom said:

    Is this about the scans being now useless because they actually listened to the player base?

     

    Personally I like that they listened for once. Yes it did cause players some inconvenience but them ignoring us has caused a lot more in the past.

     

    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.

  6. 16 minutes ago, kulkija said:

    How about individual player having a change to rent tile to org.

     

    "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.

     

  7. 3 minutes ago, Torsten said:

    The big difference is that a player can only have 5. If players want to contribute to org territory, why stop them?

     

    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..

     

  8. 10 minutes ago, Elias Villd said:

    This feature is only available to player-owned, not organization-owned

    It written in the text you quoted ?
    Anyway, I personally approve that 5 is too much, I propose to reduce to 3 tiles, but one per planet could a thing too ? And may be limit it to SZ.

     

    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.

     

  9. Quote

    HEADQUARTERS
    Each player will be able to assign five territories as their headquarters. These territories do not lose ownership when offline and remain in the players' ownership even if taxes are unpaid for longer than the two week grace period. This feature is only available to player-owned, not organization-owned, territories. We will monitor how this develops; in the future, these territories may be subject to the loss of their headquarters state if the account in question is unsubscribed; however this will not be the case in Demeter. 

     

    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.

  10.  

    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.

     

  11. 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..

  12. 20 hours ago, Doombad said:

    The fundamental point you’re missing  is that games like DU are based around a concept. They will implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game. Assuming some all knowing designer has the vision mapped out from A to Z is naive at best.

     

    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.

     

     

  13. 8 hours ago, Warlander said:

    Until all of this changes this game aint a legit PvP game.

     

    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.

  14. 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..

  15. 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.

  16. 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..

     

  17. 2 hours ago, Bobbie said:

    You keep saying this but where did you get it?

     

    I know it's been discussed forever by players during alpha, but I'm not aware of NQ ever making any such statement.

     

    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.

  18. 21 hours ago, blundertwink said:

    Their top investor has over $20 million invested in the company and even stepped in as CEO temporarily -- the goal now is recouping at least some of their investment. They would never green-light any big refactor/reboot.  

     

    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

     

     

    21 hours ago, blundertwink said:

    They will aim to secure 100-200k subs and have no intention of holding onto those subs. They know that most players won't try the game for more than a few hours. They know the churn rate will be just as bad (or worse) than open beta, and that's okay for them because they aren't trying to create long-term subs.

     

    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.

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