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GET IT TOGETHER NQ!


Tiberis

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Dear NQ,

While I am sure you are working steadily and extremely focused on dealing with the current server issues. I feel it's warranted since it's been nearly a week dealing with these issues, that server issues need to come to an end. And sooner than later. All Betas have a rough start. However this is the worse my community and myself have ever seen.


Server issues for much longer are simply not going to be accepted by the DU community. We are starting to lose players, because they have a bad taste in their mouths, and most will not return.

Players are spending hours and in some cases days on loading screens. Players are dealing with the constant pending operation, computing data, and terrain that doesn't load.

Players can't voice their concerns on Discord, due to the Mod Staff actively silencing discontent, and issuing unwarranted mutes. Which I assume you have directed. And on top of all this we get no communication at all. Just random restarts that actually make game play worse.


Regardless, the server issues need to be wrapped up and soon. You are charging for a Beta, that has no current way to cancel the subscription, and you expect players to just keep dealing with these issues. That's not how this works. Deal with the server issues, even if you have to schedule employees around the clock to get it done. There is no more time on this issue. NQ you are killing the game in the first week of Beta. There is only so much to do in the game, and currently players can't even do it.

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This needed to be said. I completely agree with you. Enough is enough. This is by far the worst Beta release I have ever seen, and they are charging us for it. And we have no way to unsubscribe. All their is to do in the game is build and mine. And you can't currently do either. I wish I hadn't given them money. My community is giving them till Friday to get this sorted out.

 

Also, having one big server was a terrible idea. There needs to be two servers to split the population and keep things running smoothly.

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well said Tiberius and I totally agree.  20 + days I have owned the game with only 4 minutes actual gameplay. A ticket that's open for just as long with gaps of up to 6 days in reply. (currently at 4 days) The amount of times I have actually filled out the refund request but not actually sent it in is crazy.  We all want the game to work so very badly and its very difficult to watch it unfold as it is. I just started a topic regarding the #help-troubleshooting channel in discord, organising that hot mess could go a long way to at least making people feel like something is being done. However, as Tiberius_Theron says, server issues are the priority. If people cant get into a game, Beta or otherwise, that they have payed cash to get into, then they will leave,  and not only will they leave, they will tell everyone they know NOT to join. A real shame since this game could be all that its advertised to be. I don't know why it was pushed out as Beta in this condition, but for whatever reason, now is the time to fix it, or, at the very least, STOP charging new people money to join, sling it back into closed Beta and then FIX it.

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14 minutes ago, Sinister said:

Oh Deal with the server issues? Im sure thar is a revelation to them.

 

And we all are in the discord too. People get muted for being drama queens in help chats complaining about shit NQ is actively working on... 

People are not just going to deal with the server issues. They'll just leave. That's how this works, and you end up with a failed game. And don't get me started on the Discord. If you aren't a troll or a mega fanboy they mute you. Any feedback given is instantly shutdown. I was personally muted for reporting someone to the Mods for name calling, just because the Mods knew them. So you have no idea what you are talking about.

Work on making a solid sentence and we'll talk.

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Has NQ even said anything about these problems? 

 

All I see on their social channels are posts about how much fun people are having -- no mention of issues, timeline for fixes, or apologies. Generally no reply to anyone complaining in the comments. They didn't even bother with an apology in the email where they reset all our passwords.

 

I also have seen some people on these forums that just want to shut down anyone with anything critical to say about DU. If mods are also shutting people down on discord? 

 

It isn't a good look for a community.

 

I get it if you are mad that people aren't seeing the game for all its potential...but NQ needs to at least say something about the problems people are having, never mind quickly fixing them as people would expect of an MMO at any public launch.

 

"Sorry we didn't expect it to be so popular, give us a week to fix things, and we'll credit every account 1 free week of playtime" would go a long, long way to keeping people interested and happy. Radio silence and trolly "loyal" fans is not really a winning strategy imo. 

 

(if y'all alpha players that saw the game at its best really want to help NQ, be patient with new players especially if the issues are clearly NQ's fault) 

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Michaelk,

No NQ has not stated anything about these problems. They have yet to officially stated any form of communication regarding server issues. People keep buying the game, and the server issues keep mounting. NQ is more than happy to take peoples money, even when they can't actually play the game. Which is sickening. I think we all completely understand they are a small team making a big game. I'm certain that's rough. But there is simply no excuse for server issues to still be a problem nearly a week in to the Beta.

As for the Discord. It's a toxic mega fanboy fan club. It's not even worth commenting there or seeking help. They don't even use a proper support ticket bot for the Discord for help issues, so the support channel is awful mess.

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And to be very honest here. If the server issues aren't fixed this week. I have enough recorded video to make a video covering the sheer lack of professionalism on NQs part. So future people buying know just how bad things really are, before buying. And I plan to do so.

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This game being called a beta is a bit of a joke. 

 

 If you’ve seen the login screen, you will know this is just an alpha in a beta’s clothing, since a whole lot of features aren’t even in game in a basic form... ergo: alpha. 
 

betas are supposedly nearly-final products with bug checking /balancing, tweaking and refining. 
 

This game is still rough as a badger’s arse. 
 

but it’s hella fun!!! 500+ hours and only a few regrets (3 complete wipes have nearly drained me of patience)

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I agree with Graxxor; having tested many games over the years, this is nothing new. I would probably be more worried if they had 0 issues. 

 

Also to be fair this is probably the most people they have had on what is a hugely un-optimized game framework. They did some stress testing before "beta" but i'm sure the servers still were not pushed nearly as hard as they are right now. Adding in more hardware to compensate takes time. So whether i'm frustrated or not from server issues I can understand and never hold it against the developer unless they push forward without addressing it. So be patient and give them to at least mid-September. 2 weeks is not a realistic expectation if they have to add more hardware into the cluster, or have to chase network issues. As I see it; its probably part hardware resource and part bandwidth bottle-necking. 

 

That being said whether its Alpha, or Beta, it is still a game under active development and prone to issues, one of the biggest any game in development can face is server stability; more so in an MMO. Warhammer faced similar issues from a rushed beta to active live and the servers could not handle the mostly untested city sieges. Totally helped kill what should have been a great game. 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Velase85 said:

Also to be fair this is probably the most people they have had on what is a hugely un-optimized game framework. They did some stress testing before "beta" but i'm sure the servers still were not pushed nearly as hard as they are right now. Adding in more hardware to compensate takes time. So whether i'm frustrated or not from server issues I can understand and never hold it against the developer unless they push forward without addressing it. So be patient and give them to at least mid-September. 2 weeks is not a realistic expectation if they have to add more hardware into the cluster, or have to chase network issues. As I see it; its probably part hardware resource and part bandwidth bottle-necking. 

 

I appreciate patience, but this just isn't the case anymore. 

 

Dual Universe uses Amazon's Cloud (AWS), the same core service that powers massive applications like Netflix, which consume thousands of times more bandwidth than DU ever will.

 

Adding hardware is not time intensive for any reasonably designed stack on AWS. It is slow in the context of responding to spikes in traffic -- but in the order of minutes, not weeks. There's no reason whatsoever why DU can't add hardware beyond not wanting to pay. Autoscaling fleets of servers can be extremely expensive.

 

These are not the days of old where MMOs run their own servers and have hordes of poor nerds trying to sling up more servers in the dead of night. 

 

If there is a hardware issue, it isn't because Amazon lacks the capacity or they can't add servers quickly enough or their bandwidth is being bottlenecked. 

 

In the context of a product launch, 2 weeks is an extremely long time to not address issues with scalability -- especially with a modern infrastructure design, and especially when one of your core promises is the scale of the universe and the cutting-edge tech you've created to allow them to play on a continuous server. 

 

TLDR: if AWS can run Netflix, it can run DU

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Fair point, but to scale they still need to know how much to scale it by, even if the service can auto-crunch the numbers how many new people are joining or have joined since the nda was lifted. That number is probably going to double; so even if they could add everything in tomorrow they may be back in the same boat as now by end of the month. Plus it's not technically a product launch its the next step in testing. this stuff is expected to happen. Promising the tech they did, they have made fair progress, it wasn't as bad as it is now during alpha and the stress testing. I feel people expect to much of a finished product from something they know is under development. You get to be part of the gears that can make this game great, do what a quality assurance tester would do, take the issue and write a bug report, then give them time to fix said issue. For example if you fly at speed sometimes the ground rendering in can cause your speeder to flip and jink about in the air. write a report then don't fly so fast so close to the ground. simple. 

 

From what I recall most mmo's I played probably used upwards of 500mb-1gb / hour while netflix uses 1-3gb / hour of streaming. But netflix does not have the same back and forth, so while netflix may use more bandwidth, it does not have to crunch player position and mining updates. That pending action message just proves my point that there is a bottleneck they have to overcome that is probably a culmination of things that can't just be done quickly. Plus if you have traveled at any speed you can clearly see the time it takes to render the new areas; so part optimizing assets. 

 

So like I said, I would expect it to be better in about 2 weeks from now after they had a chance to push changes and see the results. After all its only been 3 weeks for people who had alpha access and whatever keys they gave out, and only about a week with the new influx. Got to be realistic in expectations, even more so when projected needs are torpedoed and have to go to the money man to fix it. 

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Ive seen moslty good video's and streams. Just a few really critical video's about the subscription model and the fact that you pay for an unfinished game that doesnt work like it is supposed to do.

We also dont know the type of connection peeps have, and I think that if you run a low spec pc it will crash sooner too. (Ive heard that many build far out from the marketplace just because there is less lag(/crashes) there)

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2 hours ago, Velase85 said:

Plus it's not technically a product launch its the next step in testing. this stuff is expected to happen. Promising the tech they did, they have made fair progress, it wasn't as bad as it is now during alpha and the stress testing. I feel people expect to much of a finished product from something they know is under development. You get to be part of the gears that can make this game great, do what a quality assurance tester would do, take the issue and write a bug report, then give them time to fix said issue.

I totally get that...but I think NQ could manage expectations far better. 

 

They said "hey the game is now in public beta, come sign up for a subscription and play!" -- I think many players expected a more stable product in return for their money.

 

You can't really blame people for "expecting too much." 

 

It was up to NQ to set those expectations and communicate the honest state of the game. How they present the product to the consumer is 100% up to them. 

 

They could have called it a public alpha and not done so much press -- they still would have attracted a lot of new players for funding and testing, only without souring the first impressions for so many new people. They presented it as a beta with some bugs, not "help us be our alpha QA, and pay us for it please"...

 

It is a public launch -- no matter what label you slap on it, when you charge for a product and present it as being usable in your marketing, you can't blame the customer for being disappointed. 

 

I will absolutely be coming back and playing ( yeah i paid for a year ? ) -- hopefully this influx gives NQ the funding they need, but I worry they're going to need to earn back the trust of a lot of players...and that instead of doing that they are going to dig in and become a super-niche product that never has the resources it needs. 

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I have a fairly decent spec computer and gigabyte fiber for internet. So While i have some issue here and there, its mostly rendering at high speed movement and the annoying pending action message. I think i have had a total of 6 crashes, 4 of which were in various alpha tests. The only thing recent was doing some tutorials and not having ground render and things like that. Also had to delete a door to progress thru one of the steps that got stuck for some reason. 

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2 minutes ago, michaelk said:

I totally get that...but I think NQ could manage expectations far better. 

 

They said "hey the game is now in public beta, come sign up for a subscription and play!" -- I think many players expected a more stable product in return for their money.

 

You can't really blame people for "expecting too much." 

 

It was up to NQ to set those expectations and communicate the honest state of the game. How they present the product to the consumer is 100% up to them. 

 

They could have called it a public alpha and not done so much press -- they still would have attracted a lot of new players for funding and testing, only without souring the first impressions for so many new people. They presented it as a beta with some bugs, not "help us be our alpha QA, and pay us for it please"...

 

It is a public launch -- no matter what label you slap on it, when you charge for a product and present it as being usable in your marketing, you can't blame the customer for being disappointed. 

 

I will absolutely be coming back and playing ( yeah i paid for a year ? ) -- hopefully this influx gives NQ the funding they need, but I worry they're going to need to earn back the trust of a lot of players...and that instead of doing that they are going to dig in and become a super-niche product that never has the resources it needs. 

 

your not wrong and i agree with a lot of what you have said. I just expected it from the start as I have done this dance so many times. even with all the issues this game has way more promise than the toxic mess that is now EVE. If they play everything right, I'm betting there will be a decent influx of eve players who just want to be traders and ship builders who can get a protected plot and not worry about rebuilding a ship every other day. well only time will tell at this point. 

 

I love pvp and Darkage had some of the best around, but i do enjoy the risk vs reward in these games, like eve, last oassis, SE and so forth.

 

 

 

 

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I just want to add some information here, cause blaming NQ completely is false. Yes they have their work cut out but there is a few pieces of information missing:

 

1- The pending operation for mining only happens in Alioth and Sanctuary Moon due to the amount of people there doing the same thing, mining... the rest of us on the other planets don’t have this issue, ever....

 

2- Lag on the markets of Alioth and Sanctuary moon is due to the sheer number of players and constructs there, cause they render locally on your pc not the game itself, again, zero lag in any market on other planets.

 

3- I mention the above issues first for a reason, if you have minimum specs, you are bound to have issues, period. Most problems people are having is their potato pc’s. I have a gaming rig with 64 gbs Ram and I can run the game and my streaming software with Face Rig and I have zero issues except a little lag when near Alioth/Sanc Moon markets, that’s it. I’m not saying you need to upgrade anything, but you can’t blame NQ for your pc issues.

 

4- Internet connection is also an issue, you need to be wired, not wireless and not sharing it with others playing/watching movies etc.


5- Logging in failing is mostly user error. For example my buddy almost gave up after changing her password because she couldn’t log in with error 100. Until I said, erase everything first then type your full email and new password. She had lost all hope already, but got in game because the in game launcher didn’t recognized her password/email after the change, thus typing it again fixed it.

 

If you all noticed I didn’t quote anyone here cause I don’t know if this are your issues but putting the blame directly on NQ it’s not right either. Most problems that people are having is actually on their end, not all but most. I also want to clarify that I’m not defending NQ in anyway either cause they are also at fault for not making things more clear and the sheer amount of tickets/refunds people are putting in is also not helping either side. 

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1 and 2 - has to work anyway, otherwise servertech failed and NQ will not have their wet dream of "million of ppl playing on a single shard"

 

3 - have 64gb ram too and it lags af. While it might be a bit of an issue for some ppl with 8gb or smth, it's not common that ppl have problems because of that

 

4 - some ppl (like me) CAN'T be wired. And for many ppl 50mbit is all they get. If DU needs more than that, then they exclude 80% of ppl

 

5 - if ppl dont try that then they're lazy. But Half of the ppl I helped had login problems AND did everything right. 

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I'm betting many of you weren't around for WoW's beta ...or a myriad of other beta failures. This is not unusual and is the reason there is a beta. 

 

If it were a supposedly "Live Release" and still had these issues I could see the angst, but it's not live, it's a beta that is only in it's first week of being stressed by a larger population. It is not even remotely completed to a point where it can go live.

 

I suspect the only reason they changed the pledges to monthly plans and lifted the NDA was because they needed the money.

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3 hours ago, Iorail said:

I just want to add some information here, cause blaming NQ completely is false. Yes they have their work cut out but there is a few pieces of information missing:

 

1- The pending operation for mining only happens in Alioth and Sanctuary Moon due to the amount of people there doing the same thing, mining... the rest of us on the other planets don’t have this issue, ever....

This is a lie. Or at least a selection from some incomplete data set.

 

I'm on Madis, and mining is 50% "Pending operation".

3 hours ago, Iorail said:

 

3- I mention the above issues first for a reason, if you have minimum specs, you are bound to have issues, period. Most problems people are having is their potato pc’s. I have a gaming rig with 64 gbs Ram and I can run the game and my streaming software with Face Rig and I have zero issues except a little lag when near Alioth/Sanc Moon markets, that’s it. I’m not saying you need to upgrade anything, but you can’t blame NQ for your pc issues.

People are posting better specs than mine and having a worse time. Pending Operation is a constant feature for me, as is "no buildings" when I get back to base from a few hexes away.

3 hours ago, Iorail said:

4- Internet connection is also an issue, you need to be wired, not wireless and not sharing it with others playing/watching movies etc.

Internet connection speed is definitely a killer. I was (for "reasons" ) trying to run across a shonky WiFi on the 20th, and that really didn't go well. 

3 hours ago, Iorail said:


5- Logging in failing is mostly user error. For example my buddy almost gave up after changing her password because she couldn’t log in with error 100. Until I said, erase everything first then type your full email and new password. She had lost all hope already, but got in game because the in game launcher didn’t recognized her password/email after the change, thus typing it again fixed it.

The interface has to take some blame here. It took me a couple of goes to realise that the "obfuscated" UID and Password fields actually *did* remember the values I had entered, rather than being prompts to enter anew.

 

3 hours ago, Iorail said:

If you all noticed I didn’t quote anyone here cause I don’t know if this are your issues but putting the blame directly on NQ it’s not right either. Most problems that people are having is actually on their end, not all but most. I also want to clarify that I’m not defending NQ in anyway either cause they are also at fault for not making things more clear and the sheer amount of tickets/refunds people are putting in is also not helping either side. 

"Most" is overstating the issue. "Pending Operation" (and its wicked friends) has nothing whatsoever to do with local PC capabilities; it's *all* about exchange of information and synchronisation with the servers which are struggling to keep up; this morning (BST/UTC time), when there were only a few Europeans and scattered Antipodeans playing, mining was blissfully free of "P.O." and this changed rapidly once the States started waking up, with no significant increase in local population. All the industry that's crashing with "unknown server error" is nothing to do with client device. All the loading screens halting at nn% and not progressing are nothing to do with the client (they happen to people who have a perfectly fine time once in-game). It's all about the backend infrastructure and the architecture of the game lying on top of that.

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Really not sure why they did what they did to the login window. I’ve never seen one that obfuscated both login and password like that. 
 

it also annoys me because I have three accounts that varied very slightly in email and password that just required a couple of letters changed in each but now I have to input the whole lot. 
 

Also, when I come back the next day, I can’t tell who was logged in last so I have to type the email and password again or risk wasting anywhere up to 5+ minutes waiting to log in. 
 

my beta has been generally smoother than the alpha with a few exceptions starting about three days ago (constant HTTP kicks) and yesterday, mining was down to about 1/3 regular speed with constant pending operations and a now joined by a new two-line error code I’ve never seen before. 
 

still, this is “beta” (basically marketing term for late alpha) access, so I’m cool with that. 
 

also in Tokyo where I live, $7 will get you a BigMac with fries and a drink upgraded to medium. 
 

that’s a reasonable price IMO considering some of us backers paid $180 or more for an Alpha. 

 

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