Haunty

I am beginning to worry about the game.  I am not into PVP. I don't care if people fight each other but I don't have the time to be a hard core gamer. I have never been able to develop the skills to compete in pvp nor can I keep up with the equipment necessary to be more than a fly on a horses back in such combat.  With the Asteroid patch, the developers seem to be proud that they have added another way to force people to "fight over resources".  They also have said they aren't planning NPC's into the game before release.  I wanted to try to earn some credits so I could complete my heavy hauler by mining an asteroid today.  The asteroid was being camped by some pirates which destroyed one of my ships (I had one docked on my main ship so at least they didn't get the light hauler).  I found the ship was so destroyed it wasn't even recoverable on my map.  I can't make enough credits to continually create my ship.  I can't play the game enough to compete against pirates.  I can't even afford a shield nor guns for my light hauler to protect myself.  Is this the future of the game?  Are the developers making it so if you're not a pirate, or part of a large corporation, you are restricted to level 1 or 2 areas of the game, missing out on 60% of what this game has to offer?  Is this game going to be nothing more than hard core gamers killing anyone they can?  This will ruin the game for me.  I worry about when they add the static construct pvp into the game.  Will I be restricted to the 3 planets in the safe zone then?  They don't have a resource regeneration in the game at this point so the planets aren't going to be able to offer me anything to make credits or enjoy the game much past where I am now.  If the focus of the development of this game is all about adding things in the game to force combat, I am running out of places to explore, things to build, and the capability to even build ships(many of the elements aren't even for sale anymore and the means to create an industry line requires credits and ore which are camped by pirates, as per the developers design)  I believe this game has a lot of potential, but the direction of forcing pvp on those who aren't interested in pvp and not able to survive the space battles the developers envision will create a universe full of pker's and ruin the game for me.  It worries me.

And that's fine with me but where is the non pvp aspects in the roadmap. Its about polishing whats there already and adding some more for pvp. I'm voicing my concerns about the game becoming too pvp centric that there isn't room for those like me. 

I just skimmed the last two pages of this thread so someone else may have said this ?.  But i don't think NQ's intention is to limit anyone to any one thing.  This is just a side-effect of them adding parts of the game one at a time.
 
Planetary Mining was the only way to make Quanta, or get ore, for quite a while, and everyone was doing it, no matter how much they hated mining.  So a huge amount of the ore was mined a lot faster then i think NQ expected.
 
All these systems are supposed to work together to achieve a balance.
 
It's like NQ's trying to build a stool, one leg at a time, while we're all sitting on it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The only thing I don't like about schematics is managing them. Can I just have one central schematic bank on a core that all the machines can access?

Oh nooos the playing field isn't level, someone has more stuff then me.  Burn it all down and cancel the game!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

hello
 
i suggest to do like Eve online with CPU and powergrid max for fiting a ship
 
for exemple: the M core basic have 2.000 CPU, the exotic core M have + 50% CPU
 
1 wing cost 200 cpu, 1 engine cost 300 CPU etc then we have new gameplay for fiting our ship and it s end of big ship can carry 100.000 tonnes with 200 engine and 100 wing ?

You are last ledendary white wolf of NQ : )
 
When game dies and become ruins, you will live in them, guarding lost treasures (alonside with cursed skeleton of landmarkexplorer) and then some adventurers can kill you and get xp and loot.

This isn't required, but it would be nice if the map opened to the system map rather than "no planet selected" in the planet map if the map is opened in space.
 
It would also be nice if the planets in the system map were moved around to more accurately represent their actual locations (Jago is not that close to Lacobus).

I say keep schematics for impressive items such as AGGs, non-basic entities (engines etc) and T4-5 items. Basic items, however, should be craft-able by everyone from anywhere without schematics. If this game is supposed to have PvP on planets in the future, it would be important to be able to make basic defensive ships on site, or ships to travel from a hidden resurrection node. Basic entities are super cheap at this point anyway, and those who would be benefiting are those that aren't near the main markets.

If a player wantsto disassemble a ship completely, there should be a right-click option to recycle it. All honeycombs and all elements would be inside the (linked) inventory again. Some big ships take ages to be disassembled especially because the voxel selection tool (7) cannot capture much area.
 
If that container is full, disasselbling stops. Then link to another container, and activate DISASSELBLE again. Repeat until everything is stored.

One small, but annoying thing for me is the destination cursor - its really hard to tell whether its locating a point directly below you or on the other side of a planet. It would be good if it changed colour to indicate a clear line of sight or not.
Thats drives me nuts.
 

I think it should be adjustable with some combination of keys. 
 
Or/and a scrollbar setting in options. 

#2 was already in the code of conduct i believe.  I don't think i have ever played an MMO that didn't have that rule.
 
It's kind of necessary in a game with a persistent world, and an economy, where exploits involve duplicating or getting stuff for free.  If everyone finds out about an exploit like that days before the devs do, it causes a huge mess that they have to clean up (hopefully).  Maybe they'll decide to roll back the servers, and piss everyone off.  Or maybe they won't do anything and still piss everyone off. ?
 
Either way everyone ends up pissed off, and the devs spend a bunch of time doing things other then working on the game.
 
 
 

No, the market was worse before schematics. Most schematics are pretty cheap anyways,.

I think people comment that when some solo players whine about it being too hard or not fair because they can't compete with orgs, as if. The silent majority of solo players are carrying on happily I think.
 
I actually remember them saying the opposite. Besides I don't think a game for everyone is possible.

It seems very bizarre how we have so many types of doors, yet we don't have gates that are big enough for an XS vessel, but don't cost a fortune to make, and that aren't extremely difficult to find a place to put on a not M to L size ship.

What I'm primarily getting at here is that you can make gates using sliding doors, sure, but they don't have a few major functionalities that gates have. First of all, they do not fold up like the normal gates do. Additionally, making a gate with a bunch of doors means that it cannot be tested for airtightness in the future (when that's probably a thing), due to being different elements, at different angles, and therefore most likely having unfixable gaps. Lastly, sliding doors don't really look that good when it comes to something like a hangar door. The aesthetic they give off is not "this is a super heavy duty airlock mechanism", more of a "I am a thing you push out of the way because I'm a door".
 
Separate topic altogether, but folding doors, swinging doors, and of course gate-like compressing doors would be pretty cool too. The mor-doors the merrier. Ahem, but anyways, more gates when?

With the recent news that the org changes have been delayed/are being discussed here are a few suggestions I have about what can be done.  
 
Parent Org- Leave these as the massive organization that encompasses all things.
 
Add "Companies"- These would be organizations that do not have the ability to claim land tiles, but can still hold constructs. Meaning they can be assigned a construct token by an organization that owns a tile in order to set up their business.  This would encompass "Ship Showrooms" for ship builders to tokenize many ships for sale.  Also would encompass things like Mercanary Companies, Casino's, etc...
 
Add "Org specializations" via an Organization Talent System.  This would allow players to work together to complete Organization objectives and receive perks as an org. Some examples would be as follows;  
 
Mining Experts- Orgs receive a decreased time on refining ore on cores that belong to the org.  (instead of 3 minutes it could be 2mins 30 seconds)
Manufacturing Experts- Orgs receive a decreased time producing elements
Ship Designers- Orgs receive a 5% weight reduction on ship elements other than containers.
Transportation Specialists- Org receives a 5% reduction of fuel costs within atmosphere.
Explorers- Org receives a 5% bonus to thrust elements while in space. (this allows them to exceed the 30k km by 5%)
Mercenary Squad- Org receives a bonus 2% hp and 2% damage output while piloting ships.

These are just some examples, but could be broken down into even more bonuses.  Make these bonuses require certain "criteria" to obtain by these orgs.  This will provide gameplay loops within orgs as they strive to acquire boosts that benefit the whole org.

Some Company bonuses (due to not claiming land) criteria might be as follows;
Mining Experts- Org must mine 10m ore in total to acquire 1 talent point.  Org must mine 20m ore in total to acquire the next tier of talents. Etc...
Manufacturing Experts- Orgs must produce at least 20 different schematics with maintain levels of 100 and reach this amount in linked containers.
Ship Designers- Org must crash at least 20 different cores to acquire the 1st talent point. 
Transportation Specialists-  Org must complete at least 50 player creates hauling missions.
Explorers- Org must discover at least 5 asteroids before anyone else. (in the new system)
Mercenary Squad- Org must have killed at least 50 players or destroyed 50 cores to acquire the 1st talent point.

However people feel about the above talents is not relevant, its simply ideas to spark the thought of "goals within organizations".  These could be further broken between "organizations" and "companies" for example;

Parliament of Alioth(x planet)-  Organization.  Must have at least 10 claims on Alioth(x planet) in order to get a talent that reduces the claim cost of future tiles by 5%.
Standing Army- Organization. Must have at least 10 separate constructs with guns linked to gunner seats and containers.  Talent could include 5% reduction in power cost for static construct defenses.


This list could go on, feel free to add more suggestions.  Ultimately the reason for the post is to bring up the idea of different types of orgs and companies, companies can be within an org or independently run on an org's tiles. (or in space on cores that don't require claims) and to provide bonuses to players looking for a specific gameplay type to get perks for working together to achieve goals.  Each of these bonuses could include multiple "achievements" for the org to acquire to receive various levels of bonuses.  Also this will help to bring different orgs and companies together to help each other.  Why mine yourself when you can hire a mining org to refine ore to sell you.  Why haul it when the transportation can do it cheaper.  This would also allow new gameplay loops to be engaged with that allows player run content to shine further.

Just some thoughts.

 

Game is far from dead. This is just a few "nay-sayers" that push that propoganda, like they do in every MMO. (you said you played hundreds, then you are aware of this). Financially speaking the game isn't broke and is still on full blown development cycles. We can see this based off the time between regular updates/announcments.  The main issue you are feeling (which is common) is that you don't see people.  The main reason for this is the sheer scope of the size of the solar system itself.  (it takes 7 hours to fly to outer planets without warp for example).  That's like saying a Country is Dead because you don't see people on the back roads while travelling across the country. 

DU's population suffered a major hit in November due to the schematics update that was not well received, this is true. However most of the people who pushed through this update are still around. Its also hard to compare the server population via the # of twitch streamers due to the sheer resource cost of running DU and OBS together often requires a 2nd pc for streaming, this limits the number of streams.  It also helps if the people streaming are "actually" entertaining. No offence meant to any, but some of the streams are basically just Discord streams to friends that someone decides to put on twitch. There is no "show" attached to the stream like there are in other games.  Not to mention DU is not a "stream" friendly game, many of the gameplay loops are boring to watch others do.   This does leave some great "chatting" streams though and these are where the DU twitch community engages in amazingly fun discussions and "theories" about what NQ is up too.  But remember we always hear the "loudest" voices. Make your own decisions.
 
Also of note on General Chat- this chat function is literally a month and half old. Ie: prior to this we didn't have general chat. Its a newly added feature that was just included a few patches ago.   You also cannot see the general chat while you are in build mode, and since the vast majority of the games players are building something for most of their play time, they don't actively chat.  (people you see chatting constantly are likely people with nothing to do, no motivation to do anything, or scammers looking to recruit new player mining slaves.)  From those that aren't builders are the miners, and they are usually lost in an audiobook or watching netflix (other shows) while mining mega nodes of 2+ million ore. 

If you like playing with voxels and building you will enjoy the game longer than if you are waiting for NPCs to fight.  If you just care about shooting npcs, you will want to move on. If you are content with shooting players instead of npcs then you can have hundreds of hours of gameplay ahead of you.  Simply min-maxing your pvp pirate craft can take you months of tweaking, learning and fighting.   

Final note:  Game isn't dead, new players join everyday and the finances of the dev team aren't even at the point of reliance on player subs, the investors are still on board and working with NQ to continue to develop.  But DU is a game where time=ability and time=wealth. So that said, many people who started in September that are still around are super rich and have maxed out the talents they wanted, they are currently waiting for content.  The best advice I can give you is this;  It only costs 1 Starbucks coffee to play DU per month. Not many MMO's are this cheap.  If you play 2 hours a week or 16 hours a day makes very little difference to the "grand plan" of the developers(also talents develop over time so taking breaks is encouraged by design).  DU is a game where you get out what you put in and like any game if you cannot find something to be passionate about you likely won't remain.  I for one put in my daily 6 hours, but then I go play other games to not burn out, however when I find passion in a build then I can easily put in 16 hours and maybe not go to bed on time either.

Make your own decisions, gaming is about having fun.  Don't let a few voices ruin your fun and remember, there are a lot more positive quiet voices that NQ listens too, then the few "super complainers" everyone else hears.

I really really really want to like this game and play it all of the time. it has so much potential. But what is preventing me from liking it a lot is a multitude of things.

1) The game is very very confusing. Sand box idea, i love it, i get it, its great but just because it's a sandbox doesn't mean we can have more direction. For example: I took a shuttle from sanctuary to alioth, It took me roughly 30 minutes to find out where the shuttle is, why? CAUSE THERE'S NO SIGNS! Now, when i got dropped off on alioth i was just dumped in the middle of some massive station, no other shuttles around, no signs no sense of any direction. You know what i did? Got frustrated and logged off. Even the tutorials need a lot of polish. I think I played the building one five times or more. make the maps interactive, there's a lot of work that can be done there. Show active populations, have a heat map where battles might be taking place, something! Put more descriptions on things. Oh and make the beginning hover speeders faster, they should go double the speed. Going from my tile to the market is straight ass.

2) The game is very laggy. I think it may be because there's hundred of ships and tiles with little tiny piece of industry all over the place. Solution: introduce a decay system; after 30 days if your ship, factory, whatever is not rendered a decay timer activates and you have ten days to render your good or they go *poof* and your tile is forfeited.

3) Increase mining capabilities drastically, including early game surface mining. Make it much much easier and faster to dig and find seems of veins. Increase vein size and number. I've been playing video games for over 40 years (Yes, I'm old) In my experience the vast majority of the gaming community hates farming. The player base for this game will not grow if the farming continues to be as horrendous as it is. If the mining is easier, then ship building will become easier and then more people can get out in the world and pvp or whatever and the world will come alive. Not many people at all want to spend an hour digging around chasing a coal seem.

4) make the game a little more exciting / dangerous. Idk, give us some npc's to fight, or allow us to schedule tile defense from npc's. this would be a big project, we would need hand weapons and turrets to set up for base defense. Who doesn't love a good base defense? even if its from some raggedy npc's. I've spent idk how many hours already running around picking up rocks; BORING!

Again, i really really want to love this game tell my friends all about it, hell I'd even buy a few of them subscriptions' but i just can't. the game need so much more work before i can do any of that. I want to say more but this post is long enough. if you read it, thank you. i wish the best for this game.

Pirates need to be able to sell these mission item somewhere after they destroy haulers and steal their cargo.

1. That is the most overused / oversimplification of socialism ever. Please. No.
2. You can imply character development is not rewarding enough in DU, and you may be right. But political analogies do nothing for your argument.

Yeah the CEO wouldn't get involved with game design details unless the CEO is also the game designer. Overall I think they've been going in the right direction this year by optimizing and unraveling past mistakes before adding major content. I don't think I'd change anything other than promoting the game with gameplay footage only, no scripted scenes. And maybe more regular status updates.

I have been playing for a couple of weeks now and i have noticed that everything seems to gravitate to market 6 causing a lot of grids being placed there. however the remaining markets appear to be sparse and lack market options.
 
if the district market clusters where accessible for example district 6 was accessible for purchases from other districts, as for the lore of the game it would not be inconsistent technologically as teleportation between the districts for players is already in game and an advanced society would use that technology for short range freight transport. 
 
From a game perspective it would allow for decentralisation from district 6 to other districts allowing for a better experience for the player as it would be possible to access the market from a less populated district. even if this was isolated to a range for example districts accessible up to 25km away.
 
as it is the market 6 seems to drop fps to like 5 fps due to all the clutter.

Jeez, people act like the docking feature is finished and NQ is never going to touch it again to improve it, you really think that's the case?

It's interesting that many think a CEO is actually driving the feature set of the game. The CEO is first and foremost responsible for keeping the company afloat. And adding features at this point would be the last thing to achieve that. Driving the relevant teams to get the performance of the game core to a point where it can support the numbers of players needed to stay alive as a company would be what would/should concern a CEO I'd guess.

You can't build features on a core that is not able to support them.