Gunhand

There are lots of threads like it. I try to keep my comments and posts as reasonably well thought out as possible. Any negativity I portay doesn't come from a place of hatred or wanting to see the game fail. It comes from a place of passion of wanting the game to live up to its potential. I'm not alone in this sentiment. The OP posts from a position thats positive and they're loving the game. There's nothing at all wrong with that. Both sides of the argument are valid. DU is a special game to me and when you feel attached to something in such a way, it feels all that much worse when it goes south.

I think on more than one occasion JC was quoted as having a vision as something akin to Ready Player One. Which feasibly could exist in some form, but wouldn't work thanks to the nature of human psychology (or more precisely gamer psychology). Wherein gamers (tm) tend to have, broadly, a singular mentality to acquire wealth, notoriety, power or just to grief their fellow player. The idea itself of the "Metaverse" is just something humans aren't actually ready for. Anyone who was around at the dawn of this connected internet society was full of hope and potential to this new level of connected sharing of information that would free us from constraints. Now we just have this hellscape, ruled my advertising, misinformation and massive corporations intent on harvesting as much information as possible. The idea of what DU was supposed to be and judging by what we have already, was perfectly feasible with the right developers, a boat load of cash and a dash of luck. Whether it would work is another matter entirely.

Whilst some would appreciate your positivity and obvious enjoyment of the game, I think many of the negative issues that are ongoing with this game are felt most by those that have been here the longest. The issues go much further back than just the most recent economy changes. As a newcomer to the game with a short window of experiencing what it has to offer and enjoying it, spare a thought for those who've been playing over the years and seeing the rug pulled from under them. I'm unfortunately in that camp and in the salty mode that comes from taking some time away from the game to gather my thoughts and seeing how it plays out in the short term.

The patterns were indeed there and I saw them myself, but I like others chose to play the game with the blinders on. My moment of reality came when the game stopped being fun and sitting down to a session which should of been a fun escape, turned into something somewhat akin to that feeling you get when you have to get up for work in the morning. I don't doubt they do. Any grassroots developer working on any project would have to have passion and a drive to want it to succeed and see people enjoying their work. The problems in many game developments is that the management and shareholders don't want to make some money, they want to make all of the money. I did read in the past that UE just wasn't a capable engine for a voxel based MMO game of this type, whereas Unigine was. The functional problems that DU has with its architecture and infrastructure mainly come down to its server requirements. It would likely be solved by increasing its resources at cost which NQ don't want to make. They scaled back at the same time as the cost cutting measures when they realised how much the game was costing with AWS. To port the entire game over to UE and rebirth it would be a mammoth undertaking at insane cost and years more development. Even in the event that they decided this was a great idea and opened the idea up for crowdfunding and investment. How much goodwill has already been burned? Who would support a game that's been in protracted development all this time and mostly failed to deliver on its promises? Players wish they could do a No Mans Sky, or Final Fantasy, do a complete 180 and bring their game back from the dead. Novaquark and Dual Universe don't have that level of hype or playerbase to support anything close to that.

Its extremely sad to hear others expressing the same thoughts. Trying to squeeze a little more joy out of the DU fun sponge that's rapidly run dry. It's very apparent to many that the strangling of small groups, solo and new players is making things very difficult and far be it from me to suggest that this may be somewhat intentional, but that's the thought at the forefront of my mind. If I was a fresh, new player to this game, I dread to think the difficulties they must face If I and many other experienced players are struggling to make headway in the game.

It is indeed. I think others who have probably said the same thing as me over the years (and more succinctly), come from a place of passion and love for their game. It pains me, not to give up my constructs or community I've gotten to know, but the idea of what this was supposed to be. Still it could be worse. I could of dumped too much cash into the idea of Star Citizen and still waiting for a good, fully working game to emerge.

I wasn't going to write this post. It was also a post I never actually thought I would have to write, but events since release two months ago led me to this point. I don't post a great deal on these forums, but I'm an avid reader and professional lurker since joining at the Alpha stage. I try to keep my finger on the community pulse and to keep up to date on updates and the general buzz. I've played since Alpha and mostly enjoyed all the time I've spent. There has been many times when DU has fought against me and attempted to break me down. However I was always sold, like many others, on that potential carrot on a stick of "What if?". Over the DU development since 0.23 and beyond, the community was gutted due to the introduction of schematics. As updates and patches were introduced to the game, I've watched with dismay the amount of players with high standing in the community, slowly turn on NQ and Dual Universe when they get that stark realisation that this game is never going to live up to that perceived potential. Some go quietly into the night, others announce their vitriol for a few weeks before quitting with much fanfare. Being a player since Alpha affords me an ability to see the bigger picture of what I perceive has been going on: If you look at all the updates since Beta started and outside of some balancing updates to PVP and visual upgrades, everything else has been implemented to cut costs due to what I believe as woeful inadequacies at the design and concept level. The vision of this game and what was perceived could be done, didn't match the budget available and the technology. In short, the game that NQ wanted to make didn't match what they could afford to do. Hence, I believe, this is why JC was ousted and the company is now ran by the main investment company (who I feel wants their investment back). The game has had its life and soul gutted out of it, and with every "improvement" it takes another little piece of itself away. When the announcement came that this game was going to be released, I'm pretty sure we as the community, were in the unanimous agreement that it was way too soon. The game was undercooked and needed a lot more time before it was ready. Any development company who wanted their undercooked product to survive would of released it as an early access product. However, Novaquark is a business ran by an investment company who wants to recoup. Keeping the game in another few years of beta or early access wasn't going to make them anywhere near the money needed to recoup. With no new investment, there was only one possible course of action, throw it out the door and see if it sinks or swims. Unfortunately they forgot to teach it how to swim or provide any floatation aids. I don't want to be one of those doomsayers who, when they're not happy with the state of the game will immediately declare "zomg, this game is dead!" But It saddens me to say that, that is what I now believe. It died sometime ago when Novaquark realised that under the budget they currently have that there was no way they could afford the server costs to make it work as intended. It just took some of us longer than it should to see it for what it is. So what is the immediate future? If you look at the current lack of content and updates, all that we're really getting is the completion of the supporter goals that should of been ready on release. Beyond that, as of writing this, nothing, no road map, nothing. No enthusiasm from Novaquark, no excitement, nothing. Can the game be saved? In short, no. To do this, the game would need a large, fresh influx of money, coupled with a long protracted development time to essentially re-release and reinvent itself. We are at the point of no return though. NQ, I think are running on fumes and they know it. Releasing the game, wiping and increasing the subscription prices and then going essentially dark speaks volumes to their future plans. I do wish it wasn't this way, and I am kicking myself a little for having to write one of these posts, but I felt it needed to be said. I know this game will still have its staunch defenders (I was one of them) who will go down fighting to the very last day. But this week the game broke me. As I logged in and did my busywork and realised I was barely able to cover my costs to keep the lights on with no real goal of progression any more, my love, passion and perceived potential for the game melted away. I appreciate my rantings here are purely opinion and conjecture, but if you take the time to take a long hard look at the past few years of this games development, the clues are there. Many of us already know it and made their comments known on the various channels. The tone and overall feelings of the community are at an all time low right now and that should tell you everything as to what the community is currently feeling. I'd love to be proved wrong, I still want the game to succeed, but my joy and passion, like many others past and present in this community, is gone and it would take a truly Herculean effort on the part of NQ to get it back again. However, judging by recent efforts I won't be holding my breath.

Just because it is an MMO, doesn't mean that everyone should magically HAVE to play with others. The game was always designed around the fact that a solo or small group will never be able to compete to larger groups or orgs (which is fine). However, in recent times, the facilitation and mechanics revolving around solo play meant that playing this way has become almost impossible to make any headway at all. A solo player should always be able to make progress albeit at a slower pace than larger more organised groups. That is the problem. It's a personal choice to be a lone wolf even in an MMO game. Forcing the solo lone wolves into game mechanics such as PVP or into large orgs to be swallowed into their machine is a one way ticket to players leaving.

Giant Space Hamsters will be the long awaiting NPCs and antagonists to the Noveans settling in this part of universe. Mark my words, we'll be seeing mysterious sightings in distant corners of the solar system soon that'll end up with players entire space stations and ships destroyed in the giant hamster cheek pouches.

😉

Last night I took one last slow walk around my complex on Sanctuary. I symbolically shut down the factory, flipped the switch on the mining units, deactivated the DSAT and sat in the chair on my rooftop observatory and took in the view one last time. The silence was deafening. I felt a little emotional as the time I'd spent working on all this had been one of the most difficult parts of my life. Every time things had been difficult, I'd found myself retreating into this game as a form of therapy to help me through the events going on around many of us for the past few years. I think in a world that feels totally out of control at times, its amazing that we have the technology to be able to immerse yourself into being somewhere else like this. Out of the probable thousands of games I've played since being a youngling I can say proudly that Dual Universe is one of the very few that has made it into my upper echelon of games that I love and have spent a significant amount of time with. So I just wanted to write this positive thread to say thanks to NQ for the development of this game. It's not a perfect game by any means, there's still glaring omissions in features as well as bugs galore but its a special game to me nonetheless. I sincerely hope it manages to ride the storm over the coming weeks, months and hopefully years to reach its full potential as I feel it deserves it. I've played all the other similar and inspired games such as Elite Dangerous, No Mans Sky, Space Engineers, Starbase, Star Citizen, Empyrion, and Eve Online but this one holds my interest in a way the others didn't. I took one final screenshot from the observatory before descending the lift one final time to the habitat area that I never got around to working on. The enormous empty room contained a solitary bed and a bonsai tree. I made one more cursory check of my Nanopack to make sure all the blueprints I would need for the coming journey were there before laying down on the bed and stared at the slightly janky ceiling voxels. Lets see whats out there...

As far as is aware the beta accounts will work fine but will require a sub to keep playing after launch. I think there was mention if a small grace period for people who subbed to cover the downtime between beta closing and release. If this applies to beta accounts I don't know. The main thing to know is you will need a sub to continue using that account on release

You've have been playing for 2 years on a free beta account and somehow feel you haven't gotten value from that? You received 2 years of completely free game time and feel you still need compensation for your own time spent playing? If you've enjoyed playing the game over that time surely NQ should receive some form of monetary input from you as payback? Or should they continue to allow you more rewards when you've given nothing back? If you've not enjoyed playing then don't pay a sub, that's your choice. You make it sound like you've been tied to your PC and forced to play for the past 2 years against your will and demand recompense. I backed the game, paid money, played for a little longer than two years, enjoyed my time and will be back after release and enjoy the extra bonus rewards because I paid for them. As far as I'm concerned I paid to play the game.

I appreciate the idea to release the game through Steam, but I have an intense feeling it's going to get crucified in the reviews. Steam will open the game up to a wider audience as it deserves and needs the playerbase, but releasing as a full release with a sub when it's still missing its core pillars and features will not go down well. If it was through an early access system players may be more forgiving but as it stands I feel it will not go well. I hope I'm proved wrong.

The VR market is indeed small which is unfortunate. Meta are banking a whole lot on being able to capture the market with the Quest being a more user friendly standalone device but it's still not there yet and might not be for some time. As for if there are tools available, your only option is for something like vorpx or similar. The other problem you run into using third party tools to force a game into VR is the online aspect. Using some form of mod or manipulation to an online game could be seen or flagged as an exploit and get you banned. It would only work if it was officially sanctioned. It's all good if you're doing it on a single player game but online would be a grey area.