Squidrew_

I can argue without getting too wet that our organization, which has about ten active members + the 20 other players who have played with us in the past, still want the vision of the initial game to be realized.
And we are all more or less aware of the sacrifices necessary for this last, end of planetary mining, industrial nerve, limitation of core units... All this is positive for us if it allows us to carry out the vision.
 
Here is a non-exhaustive list of the vision of the game that we support :
 
"At the same time, we want rare resources to be hard to secure, exploring the unknown to be challenging, and territory control to be central for Alliances and Empires."

" The ship’s autonomous AI will constantly monitor every action performed in its action radius and neutralize any attempt of aggression or unauthorized destruction. Beyond that zone, it’s PvP free-for-all. You only go there if you’re well prepared. "

" But it will be in principle possible to settle a new safe zone anywhere on any planet (except in another safe zone), if enough players are willing to contribute to its building and maintenance. "
 

" In Dual Universe, creating a market will require nothing more than setting up a Market Unit, a particular Element that you can craft and install in any construct of yours. The Market Unit requires an energy supply and a container to store the traded goods "

" - let the players set their markets anywhere they want, making the geopolitical/strategic aspect of this a core element of the emergent gameplay "
 

"One important thing to understand is that Resurrection Nodes (or RN) are expensive. Very. Whether you buy it or you collect the materials to craft it, this will be a considerable investment. "

" A Resurrection Node is a power hungry machine "

"You need to power it and make sure it is fully charged, and the time it takes for a full charge will depend on the type of power source you can afford to use. This can range from a few minutes to a few days."

" In any case, one thing is sure: the resurrection nodes are going to be a central element of gameplay and emergent strategies/counter-strategies between opposing factions "
 

" Duties are things like: a price to pay per month, per day or per use to be able to use the tag, a price to acquire it, a certain location that you must be in to be able to use it, etc " 

" Another important aspect is the notion of warranties: when I give a tag to someone, I can also take it back at any time. I may agree to provide a warranty attached to this tag, which says that the removal will be done after a 24h or 48h notice, or that I agree to pay a certain amount when I remove the tag, as a compensation. " 

" The last notion I want to talk about is the notion of ?power delegation?. "


 

I agree with u. 1000%,
 
awesome collection o the DevBlogs and the good things they said there! 

You know,
i try to put me into NQ. Has something to do with being empathic.
If i was NQ, i see the active players i would cry and lose ambition to work for those whining, ungrateful but paying customers.
Even if you listen to suggestions, deviate from the plan and the initial vision to fulfill stupid suggestions that were never planned,
work your ass of to implement many of those things into a game where the players were intend to create the content.
Dosnt it feel like a waste of time, when the community is whining even louder after you devided from the plan to just implement the tools for the players and not the content?
Well if i were NQ i would think about ever listening to this ungrateful community again and try to finish the project as soon as possible without breaking too many promisses.
I would tell the community to not being that negative and tell NQ not just where they failed, but also where they have done something good.
But hey i allways try to be empathic, im not a fanboy...
Well... i lied, im a Fanboy after all 😜
 
Jokes aside, let us remind NQ why we wanted this game, why they wanted to fulfill this vision and let them DU theyre job...
And lets DU our job.
Both sides are the reason if DU will be unsuccessful. Not just NQ, but also the Comunity.
We in Germany have a saying
Sweep in front of your own door
or
Grab your own nose
Means befor critizising others, check if you cannot do it better, or
If you rely on others, then you are abandoned. So you have to do your job first

Im not that negative about NQ,
i know they read everything and they know exactly what the community wants.
They tell us in they're podcasts that they listen to us. And i really believe they do.
So many gamefeatures were implemented only because of the voice from the community.
More market interaction - they implemented Schematics and it worked as intended
Easier Tools for Voxelmancy - they implemented the Vertex precision tool
Activitys for PVP and PVE - they implemented Shipwrecks and Alien Stations for PVP
Just three suggestions that came from the community and have been implemented.
NQs time is limited, but ive never heard from NQ that the budget is yet. So i have faith in them, they will save the economy and implement planetary PVP befor the release.
I have faith that they get the games economy running without a wipe that will kill the game entirely.
And i have faith that NQ is still up for the initial vision of DU and working on it.
I have less faith in the playerbase, because i see many players who joined the game, espeacially after the beta start, who havnt recognized the vision of DU and many dont seem to understand what DU is all about.
Dual Universe was never planned as a game build by developers to entertain players.
Dual Universe was planned as a parrallel world to our real world with all its good and bad sides.
Good is everything the kickstarter page told us. a virtual world build by players for players and all activitys come from the players.
Bad is that everyone has to work for it. You have to work in the game and yes the game feels like work, because it was allways intended to be.
But Work that pays out, with activitys for players and an emergent ecosystem, where the players build orgs, orgs build citys, citys that have to be defended against other players and naturally grow.
It seems many players have forgotten that they have to build the games content with all the many tools NQ gave us.
Not the devs build the world and the activitys. The players DU
Only task for NQ is to make those tools engaging, so we enjoy that work.

Good points
I agree by 100%
What you wrote, made me think this:
 
I think we all agree about current problems. Direction of development is off
 
If NQ really does listen us , are those problems on us?
 
This I like to say to NQ:
Respect original vision and go towards it.
Ignore proposals which  may lead to wrong direction.

The founding idea for DU is still solid. NQ makes the tools and the community makes content.
 
But.. The tools where never made, so obviously the community was never given a chance to make content.
And the content we do have is a credit to a few very dedicated players managing to work around the limits set by NQ more then anything else.

Huge safe zones where you can't wage war. Pvp pushed to the edges for a a few niche plasma 99% of the player base doesn't care about. No player markets, and now NQ making showrooms and exchange because captains customs and all the countless others weren't good enough? This game has 0 npcs or real pve content and was marketed as player driven, yet every patch they restrict what a player can do in the universe.  I don't see this game lasting 6 months past "release".

Are we finally gonna see real player markets?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/posts/1692359
 
Player run economy was one of the main pillars for this game.
Current dispenser based so called "Player markets" are only a placeholder.
 
NQ - Please read your Kick-starter post/promise, and give us comment about this.
 
At latest "Ask Aphelia" podcast were some discussion about Player markets, but only as a late game High end feature, which is not what is defined at Kick-starter.
 

Exchange seems to be further moving us away from Player Controlled Markets/Cities to NPC controlled.
 
Talent points - Why?  Not going to complain except having to re-do all my talents again ugh (kinda happy how I ahve mine atm)
 
DAC - Good idea to test your systems.
 

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

Hello, Noveans!
 
I’m Cyrille Fontaine, Creative Director here at Novaquark. These are exciting times and I wanted to give everyone an overview of our objectives and direction for Dual Universe.
 
 
A game like Dual Universe is a never ending labor of love and ongoing development, but there is a point when you just need to assess if it is ready for a release. After close to two years of testing and numerous major additions to the game, we have decided to prepare the game for launch.
 
Development of Dual Universe continues at full speed, and we’re spending the lion’s share of our focus right now on fixing bugs, stabilizing the game, improving our back-end systems, and overall continuing to polish the game.
 
We’re close to deploying a brand new feature that we expect will be a hub for creators and merchants alike to gather and present themselves to other players. It’ll be open to anyone who wishes to participate and advertise their shop, museum, service, or any other point of interest.
 
We’re also working hard to deliver our promises to our Kickstarter backers that supported us from the beginning. We’re searching for a new shipping partner to deliver the physical rewards as well as delivering the digital rewards through the major game updates of 2022. We’re also implementing an initial web-based version of DACs.
 
  Our team continues to analyze game data and read your feedback to focus our efforts on where we can be most effective, and this means that our plans can change with developments in the game, but looking to the future, I want to share some of what we currently have planned in upcoming content updates for Dual Universe.
 
Flotillas are a new feature we’re developing that will allow players to form temporary groups of constructs. These will help in identifying friend from foe, assuming your foes haven’t already infiltrated your squad. This will improve many different aspects of group play ranging from fleet engagements, running convoys, piracy, and more.
 
Another gameplay feature we’re looking to add is recycling, which would enable players to better manage their inventories by turning parts of broken or unwanted elements back into components.
 
We want to expand PvE with the goal of helping players bring the game-world to life and improving the story in which everyone experiences the game. The mission system is one area of focus for this goal in developing more complex, interconnected, and lore-oriented objectives. 
We’re also developing a power management system. A good way to consider how energy will work is to look at how construct maximum speeds have changed. Players must decide how to specialize each ship, and similarly, must make choices on how best to distribute power across their constructs.
 
We want to increase the quantity of discovered planets and moons as well as new aspects, biomes and gameplay opportunities, and to produce planetoids the size of big asteroids, much like the Thades belt rocks, but claimable as a territory.
 
One of the most resource-intensive features that we have to tackle is planetary warfare. It brings significant change to the game and, before we can achieve it, we have to bring PvP in general to a more mature state. We know that territory warfare is an important game system to many of you, so continue to help us improve PvP by engaging in fights to generate data for us to analyze and continue to improve the system.
 
There are also many other features that we are looking to improve or introduce in the future.
 
 
Now, let’s discuss the topic of a reset.
 
We have seen your many posts across Discord, our forums and social media. We’ve heard your frustration and know that many of you are waiting for a decision about whether or not we will reset. Let me assure you that no matter what we decide, you will not be reset back to square one. Of the different options we’ve been discussing in case of a reset, we are certain that you will keep your core blueprints, including blueprints owned by an organization that you lead. We are also looking into which other important parts of your game progress could be kept if we do reset.
 
Yes, the internal discussion about a possible reset does continue, and it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most significant decision we currently have to make for Dual Universe. We appreciate our players and your engagement with us, but I also want everyone to know that all of us here at Novaquark are eagerly awaiting the day we can share concrete news with you.
 
That is all for this message. Until next time, thank you for your attention, Noveans!
Please don't hesitate to provide your feedback here.
- Cyrille Fontaine (NQ-Kyrios)

Hello, dear Noveans!
 
Let us know below your thoughts on the DAC status update!
 

Hello, Noveans!
 
We have good news: DACs are coming to Dual Universe! As many of you already know, DACs are an important feature of the game’s economy, allowing players to gain game time with quanta. We will initially be releasing a website-based DACs system in the coming months and will then be further developing the system moving forward.

WHAT IS A DAC?
 
A Digital Access Coupon (DAC) is equivalent to a month of subscription. Think of it as a digital coupon that you can use to gain 30 days of subscription time or transfer to another player. 

HOW CAN I REDEEM AND TRANSFER DACs?

Players will interact with this first iteration of DACs on our website. You’ll be able to see an overview of your DACs and be able to redeem as many as you’d like in exchange for game time. You’ll also be able to find other players by searching for their name and transfer DACs to them, but in order to receive DACs, a player must first have an account or create one on our website. There are no limits to the amount of DACs that may be transferred from one account to another.
You will also be able to view your DACs history, giving you an overview of previous transactions.

HOW DO I GET DACs?
 
The initial set of DACs being released has already been purchased by our Kickstarter backers through the Founder and Supporter packages. You can however receive DACs from any player who has already purchased them, for example in exchange for quanta, allowing you to buy Dual Universe game time using your in-game assets, or to gift game time to friends.
 
 
Just as a reminder, we wish to reinforce that this is only the first iteration of DACs in Dual Universe. We’ll be adding to this system over time and will work on integrating DACs into the game as an item that can be traded directly from a market. As always, we welcome your thoughts and look forward to reading your feedback in this forum thread.
 

Ask Aphelia Episode #1
 
Welcome to our brand new podcast called, Ask Aphelia! A Novaquark podcast where we answer community questions about Dual Universe. 
 
In our first episode, we discuss the build mode exterior grid, player tutorials, game optimization and the range of smaller weapons. We hope that you will enjoy hearing the voices of our team and the informative answers that they have shared. 
 
Please have a listen by following this link.
 
If you have any questions, or perhaps even a follow-up question to what has discussed in this episode, please use this form.
 
Please share your thoughts about this episode of our Ask Aphelia Podcast here.

I had a character reset today so that I could test the new FTUE, and here are some of my observations:
 
The new outposts are great.
The new hover ships are great.
I like the landscape on Haven and the lack of all those colored rocks.
I like that it gives you a VR and resurrection node, and gets you started with a productive base from the get-go.
I like everything as far as it went.
 
I will miss the 20 minute intro that Aphelia used to give to introduce you to everything. It was a nice "get acquainted with the game mechanics" session.
 
This was certainly nothing that I would go out of my way to do a second time. It was way too short. Whereas I enjoyed the old one multiple times. And the old one tried to encourage you to continue for the first several hours by giving you tasks to accomplish, where this one leaves you on your own in a matter of a few minutes by doing those first few tasks for you.

Sub with quanta (DAC) is already planned but not until release.

Noveans,
 
First, we wish to thank everyone for all of your feedback and questions about the topic Shedding Light on a Novaquark Internal Discussion.
 
We wanted to let everyone know that the internal discussions are still in process and currently ongoing with all of the pros and cons mentioned in the thread above. This is a big decision and we want to do what is right for Dual Universe, as well as our current and future players.
 
We have been reading all of your feedback and questions, and they have been extremely useful in our internal discussions. As soon as a decision is made, we will pass that information to you. We appreciate your patience and support as we continue to explore and investigate the best possibilities for Dual Universe. Thank you!
 
In addition, we will soon have information about the Kickstarter Rewards, as well as DACs to share, so please keep watch for that!
 
 

 
New Community Podcast 
 
We know that you have many questions about many Dual Universe topics on your mind. Next week, we will be starting a new podcast where we will be bringing your questions to our Novaquark team for answers. 
 
How does it work? Good question! 
 
If you have a question about Dual Universe (game mechanics, lua, FTUE - these are just some examples of topics to ask about), then head over to our Community Questions Submission Form and enter your question(s) there. Once submitted, just listen to the upcoming podcasts and your question may be included there. We look forward to hearing from you!
 

I don’t even understand the concept of taxes. It’s like teenagers came up with the game design. 
 
so much of this game design revolves around aphelia that players are demoted to secondary tier members. So much for player controlled. 
 
more like players controlled… by big brother. 

Nonsense bot missions to bot receivers that have no relevance to actual market stock or availability of items. 
 
Have to buy permission to make stuff from bots on a machine by machine basis. 
 
The only central markets that exist are bot run and must pay the bot tax to sell your wares. Players become mere clients. 
 
Sell ore to bots. Ore disappears.
 
Pay bots to activate your mining machines and equipment in a particular area of land for a specific time.
 
Remotely deactivated by aphelia for non payment… what kind of nonsense is this?
 
same goes for industry. 
 
the whole lore and head canon for this game is so dystopian and arbitrary it’s as if zero thought went into it…

I like the changes. I agree with others. The warp effect could benefit from being toned down. One other major visual thing that I would love to see tweaked is toning down the shield visuals. Like having it only highly opaque when you are taking fire / in combat. It makes the game look really bad when you have a bunch of parked ships with giant glowing bubbles. The general look is okay just it is so evenly opaque and very bright. So much so that you can't even see how cool the ship designs are.
 
I feel like most of NQ's art decisions would benefit from a pass that just reduces the contrast, brightness and opacity of many effects by about 50%. Good effects like sound design, if you do your job well players do not notice your work. It just feels right as a whole. Less is more IMO.

Certainly something I can see play a part and I expect we wil lstart seeing the signs of this soon enough as release approaches fast
 
 
And this is a big one.. The current database will prbably be messy at best and eespecially if NQ optimizes and redesigns the database structure, this may well hav ebenefits fo rthe game on the sort and longer term
 
 
This wil certainly be a thing, the number of players who left is far, far greeater than the number remaining. And also, I believe there is a good few who out of priciple will wait until "release". So the gain here will likely far outweigh the loss
 
 
This coul dbe a big one too form a PR  perspective, especially when it combines wit hte next one..
 
 
Yes, all these I believe to be very much valid reasons.
 
The beta has way too much "baggage" and many will have learnt much and have found they may have made incorrect choices in aa few ways. The wipe, when what I expect will be talent points returning to the pool and blueprints for your created constructs (not all owned, just what you created) both makes sense and really is unavoidable at this point

There is far more benefits than issues with such a wipe. The few that will actually leave the game are not really relevant from a business perspective.

My points to defense the wipe: 
 
-It is a publicity claim, although many players believe that new players appreciate landing on a server full of life, the reality is that most prefer virgin worlds. 
 
-Sanitation of the database, all the servers as time goes by tend to work worse and worse, and even more so if they have suffered major infrastructure changes, due to big patches. 
 
-Restart interest in the game for old players, who, when they return to the game, after a pause, do not finish rejoining comfortably, hindering their previous progress 
 
-Relaunching the project, if the wipe is accompanied by a map change, graphic improvement, and a patch with a lot of content, can be an excuse to re-present the project as something new. 
 
-Eliminate the feeling of a dead world, despite the fact that there are many things in the game built, the vast majority are abandoned, flying over shells of large projects that do not advance, in reality it only shows that the game is in decline. 
 
-Eliminate from the game a lot of illegitimately gained wealth, despite the fact that we are convinced that it is easy for the smart to become rich again after the wipe, there are many rich who are not so because of their intellectual abilities, but because of their lack of scruples exploiting to the maximum game glitches. 
 
-Restart of many communities, there are many communities that a wipe can reactivate, since most projects decline when the players of a community disappear little by little, leaving many orphaned players who end up also stopping playing due to lack of partners, or joining other communities where they will never feel 100% part of the project, a wipe allows communities to restart and start again side by side to build projects in which you can feel involved. 
 
-Illusion to have everything to discover and to be back in a technological career, to start from scratch, it is always an emotional push, where you feel motivated to unlock both individual and collective achievements, a wipe offers a restart to those feelings. 
 
-Exponential increase in income for the company, although they are temporary, they can buy time so that the company can find a way to retain players, adding more and more content, instead of continuing in the dynamic of cutting content to adjust costs.

Well, two things I'd like to talk about here, but it's all related to honeycomb refining. Basically, seems like the Honeycomb Efficiency talents are either broken or don't have correct descriptions. 
 
This is what honeycomb refining looks like if you don't have any talents put on, you put in 1800L of material and get 180m³ of honeycomb, every 3 minutes:

 
Now, if you get the "Honeycomb Efficiency" talent, which says "-10% crafting time for XXXXXX Honeycomb Schematics", the batch size is increased, but the time is not changed - at level 3 I've got 2500L to 250m³, still 3 minutes:

 
And this is what the talent description says:

 
To make things worse, this talent is required at level 4 to be able to learn both honeycomb refining and productivity skills. For those who actively work producing honeycomb isn't too big of a deal, but I produce mostly to myself and barely used 180m³, can't even tell how I will use 250m³ or more. Please fix this.
 
As a second note, would be nice if we could run fractional batches of certain stuff such as honeycomb. Like, if I could run just half or a quarter of it would be so much better, specially because there's stuff I simply won't need that much of (such as material used for small details, etc).
 
Thanks!
 
 

Here is my take on the points brought forward by NQ, it took a while to read through all the other posts and form my own reply. I have not been an avid responder on the forum but please consider the following:
 
On the premise that
NQ fixes known bugs and exploits. NQ actively prevents, punishes and reverts exploits in the future. NQ creates a somewhat stable and equal economy (we were getting there). We paid to PLAY the game. Our gains like quanta, ore and inventory should not be a given right. Persistence of our intellectual creations (blueprints) is preferable. Our real live investment (time, money) should be considered. There should be no more wipes from here on out. Make sure the game is interesting enough for veteran and new players alike.  
Factors under consideration
Removing unpopular things: I see no need to do this. Please keep schematics, they work fine. Fix things that need fixing Resetting the game economy: I can really see the benefit of this. Let us become industry moguls on a level playing field. The wealth created during beta is void. Experienced veterans: Please don’t take away our nice experiences, encounters and joy we had playing. Right start for new players: Sure, Let them do the FTUE and grind like we did. We can help them. Persistent blueprints: Sounds like a very good idea, please make them progressive: You can deploy them with just a core and then “fill” them with voxels and elements. Planet revamp: Please go right ahead and create something truly nice for us. Be generous in helping those who will be inconvenienced.  
Alternatives:
No wipe: An option, but it would create an immense balance problem. Unfortunately I say no. Partial wipe: Keep only voxels, remove elements. Do planet revamp and allow a one time magical blueprint for affected players. Help them relocate. Feels like a little of nothing on all ends. Legacy server: Double the cost, half the players. No. Full wipe: Starts to feel like the best option but you need to compensate players for the time and money they invested already. Keep blueprints for everyone, remove quanta and talents but give them something back for every month they played or paid, from those "rewards" we could buy back talents and/or quanta, at players choice. No idea how much this should be but somewhere between sufficient and all.  
Some possible perks for veterans would alleviate the pain for me:
We can claim a starting location before release (Aphelia claims a ring of tiles around a market so no one has that benefit) We get to keep one basic XS ship, think double pocket speeder allowance with space capabilities to start off with We get the old element textures (yellow containers, etc.) as skins to show our mark of veterancy We get some pocket quanta and talents to spend. That's it, thanks.

I wish NQ had given us an explanation on how, we, the first pioneers of a new civilization, woke up to already amply-stocked Markets (on every planet!), huge Institutes, Ship Shops offering cutting-edge technology, free and insistant shuttles to the Moon, buried wrecks and even a guaranteed daily income...

I'll actually be quite happy if they wipe. A good occasion to revisit FTUE, re-settle and then rebuild Lexikon: new place, new style, new layout, new materials, new formats...

But I also understand my phlegm is in proportion to the little investment I have in the game proper: no territory holding, no industry, no pvp, no org politics... I'm quite the hermit.
 
And NQ have been soooo bad at making decisions and communicating about them since Beta started !
 
Still.
 
Man the ranks, hold the line, keep the banners up, Noveans. Our universe will come to be.