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STOP the free repairs, fuel and teleports, cut the apron string and pass it to the players


Moosegun

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Been thinking about posting this for a while but thought NQ would have done something already.

 

Going to post this as politely as I can but the support giveaways are a COMPLETE JOKE.  50% of people are lying, this is obvious because they say things like:

"I crashed when coming into atmosphere, logged back in and my ship was destroyed" - bullshit, you crash your ships stops what they actually means is "I have a really heavy ship, I crashed the game coming into atmosphere because i couldnt slow down, logged back in with zero momentum and my massively overweight ship fell like a rock"

"I just died on XXXXX insert planet and have magically teleported to Ailoth, can you port me back" = I was mining and tried to use the force respawn to cheese back to my ship, but didnt check my node before I used this soft exploit

 

This is causing a LOAD of problems, firstly you are completely shielding these new players from any survival elements of the game, experienced players know to fly with good scrap and extra fuel.  New players arent learning these lessons because when they make mistakes (and most ARE player mistakes) they get freebies.


The worst part about all this is that they are making a huge section of gameplay / career paths completely redundant.  In alpha there were loads of players planning to set up as repair / refuel crew or taxi services, I have reached out to several of these to see how business is and there ISNT ANY.  The game has limited career paths as it is (without really knowing the game) these are some of the more obvious ones and you are making them irrelevant.  The longer this goes on the worse it will get.

My solution - send out an email saying that the daily quanta is being continued but it is being called BETA SUPPORT INCOME, it is paid to ensure players have funds in case of emergency.  You then reach out to verified support services orgs and bring them into support via some additional channel, where you can send people who need there services.

 

This needs to be done soon, as you are making a massive rod for your own back by giving this crutch to new players (although seen several vets abusing it too).

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2 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

You then reach out to verified support services orgs and bring them into support via some additional channel, where you can send people who need there services.

no need for that - just let players handle this themselves alltogether. no need for NQ to support/promote/"help" any org ingame. Players are very well capable of doing this alone. No need for favoritism here

 

+1 on the rest

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Just now, Lethys said:

no need for that - just let players handle this themselves alltogether. no need for NQ to support/promote/"help" any org ingame. Players are very well capable of doing this alone. No need for favoritism here

 

+1 on the rest

Whilst I agree about the favouritism, there does need to be some sort of handover, even if it is just a community discord where all player offering those services can advertise, otherwise you are dropping new players in the doodoo.

I often find myself helping out in support but I have to leave because otherwise i wouldnt be able to stop myself calling some of these jokers out, even the support staff know they are lying.

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19 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

Whilst I agree about the favouritism, there does need to be some sort of handover, even if it is just a community discord where all player offering those services can advertise, otherwise you are dropping new players in the doodoo.

exactly - just inform everyone that they stop these helping measures from a NQ official (free teleport, repairs,...). that's it. no need to direct them somewhere new. let players figure this out themselves.

if some newbro can't ask a simple question in the ingame chat or on discord ("I crashed. What should i do now?") then this isn't a game for him either way.

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13 minutes ago, Lethys said:

exactly - just inform everyone that they stop these helping measures from a NQ official (free teleport, repairs,...). that's it. no need to direct them somewhere new. let players figure this out themselves.

if some newbro can't ask a simple question in the ingame chat or on discord ("I crashed. What should i do now?") then this isn't a game for him either way.

Yeah I do kind of agree with you actually, if they did that i am pretty sure the community will step up.

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We are what, 7 weeks in from Beta launch?  For me personally game has been super stable.  I 100% agree, fuck all this bullshit and these handouts.  Only things that should be investigated is when a player loses all of their base/container inventory and things of that nature.   I wouldn't be surprised if it was way beyond 50/50 and to the point of 80%+ are just scam reports. 

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1 hour ago, JohnnyTazer said:

We are what, 7 weeks in from Beta launch?  For me personally game has been super stable.  I 100% agree, fuck all this bullshit and these handouts.  Only things that should be investigated is when a player loses all of their base/container inventory and things of that nature.   I wouldn't be surprised if it was way beyond 50/50 and to the point of 80%+ are just scam reports. 

I have about 18 million now in outstanding tickets, the worse was a massive stack of Stainless, but all part of beta.  Only posted the expensive stuff.

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In NQ's perspective each case you mention is a potential loss of revenue and a possible detractor to their "support". They have been in "revenue over everything as we need the cash" mode for months now and it shows. I doubt that will change and will only get worse in the months ahead with more rushed features and quick band aid fixes to remove symptoms all for the sake of keeping players subscribed.

 

NQ will do whatever they can to make the game as easily accessible and "issues" as painlessly resolved in order to maintain revenue.

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44 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

NQ will do whatever they can to make the game as easily accessible and "issues" as painlessly resolved in order to maintain revenue.

That's all fine and good, but you should be aware that people are abusing this to teleport ships around.

 

There are plenty of legitimate cases where people deploy BPs only to see them shoot off into the sky - but I keep seeing the same names asking for ships to be TPd around.

 

Now I don't know what's in those ships, but it wouldn't surprise me if people were really TPing a giant pile of L containers between planets.

 

 

At the very least there should be a limit on how many free TPs you can get from NQ a week.

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1 minute ago, blazemonger said:

No arguments there but NQ, being stretched very thing staff wise I expect, have decided to not ask questions too much

I have seen some NQ staff start to ask - just yesterday they asked a guy why he was asking for the 2nd ship TP in less than an hour...

 

This can be solved fairly easily with discord bots that can assign people who got a TP in the past week to a group and remove that group from them in 7 days.

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37 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

just yesterday they asked a guy why he was asking for the 2nd ship TP in less than an hour

Finally they're starting to grow a semblance of a backbone. Should've happened a few weeks ago. Some of those requests are ludicrous.

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3 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

Unless there is an outage or a glitch causing an unrecoverable issue which we know can be hard to recover from (if not impossible), players should fix their own problems. That is part of playing this game really.

The thing is, I think if NQ didn't offer TPs it would actually give the community a chance to help instead.

 

Look at the Fuel Rats in Elite.

 

I'm personally totally down to fly out to help someone recover their ship.

 

Unless your ship teleported 5km into the ground, it can be recovered with the help of other players easily

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8 hours ago, Moosegun said:

Been thinking about posting this for a while but thought NQ would have done something already.

 

Going to post this as politely as I can but the support giveaways are a COMPLETE JOKE.  50% of people are lying, this is obvious because they say things like:

"I crashed when coming into atmosphere, logged back in and my ship was destroyed" - bullshit, you crash your ships stops what they actually means is "I have a really heavy ship, I crashed the game coming into atmosphere because i couldnt slow down, logged back in with zero momentum and my massively overweight ship fell like a rock"

"I just died on XXXXX insert planet and have magically teleported to Ailoth, can you port me back" = I was mining and tried to use the force respawn to cheese back to my ship, but didnt check my node before I used this soft exploit

 

This is causing a LOAD of problems, firstly you are completely shielding these new players from any survival elements of the game, experienced players know to fly with good scrap and extra fuel.  New players arent learning these lessons because when they make mistakes (and most ARE player mistakes) they get freebies.


The worst part about all this is that they are making a huge section of gameplay / career paths completely redundant.  In alpha there were loads of players planning to set up as repair / refuel crew or taxi services, I have reached out to several of these to see how business is and there ISNT ANY.  The game has limited career paths as it is (without really knowing the game) these are some of the more obvious ones and you are making them irrelevant.  The longer this goes on the worse it will get.

My solution - send out an email saying that the daily quanta is being continued but it is being called BETA SUPPORT INCOME, it is paid to ensure players have funds in case of emergency.  You then reach out to verified support services orgs and bring them into support via some additional channel, where you can send people who need there services.

 

This needs to be done soon, as you are making a massive rod for your own back by giving this crutch to new players (although seen several vets abusing it too).

 

I agree with this... and to add on make any support help a once and done type thing... Kind of like how Frontier will restore your ship for you, but only once and after that it is on you.

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6 minutes ago, Treelessrain said:

 

I agree with this... and to add on make any support help a once and done type thing... Kind of like how Frontier will restore your ship for you, but only once and after that it is on you.

We are getting somewhere here, like that a LOT, like a token..... one per YEAR, anniversary gift, they should put it to the marketing dept.

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5 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

We are getting somewhere here, like that a LOT, like a token..... one per YEAR, anniversary gift, they should put it to the marketing dept.

I was thinking more like a once per account thing.. If you have multiple accounts connected to the same email address than the dev reset can still only be used one time. 

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6 minutes ago, Treelessrain said:

I was thinking more like a once per account thing.. If you have multiple accounts connected to the same email address than the dev reset can still only be used one time. 

We need anniversary gifts though.....

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5 hours ago, Mordgier said:

Look at the Fuel Rats in Elite.

 

I'm personally totally down to fly out to help someone recover their ship.

Spoiler

Totally not recruitment but feel free to DM me if you're interested in joining an organization that revolves around this. :ph34r:

 

That aside, a-hecking-men.

 

With the advent of Beta, I was expecting to get a massive windfall of requests for help so much so we'd be having to do bulk runs where we load up on a dozen or so people going to one planet, then fly around and hit them bing-bing-bong-bong-bing-bing-bong. Our number of requests was fairly nominal as we became more well known through advertising on the forums, in the DU-scord, and from advertising at marketplaces. We're not yet advertising at the markets because DU Classifieds isn't yet fully operational, and I don't want to plop just a lonely screen there anymore.

 

Instead, what have we gotten, barely a trickle. It started out good early on with a high of 26 in the first two weeks, then it fell to seven in the next two week period, and for the previous two weeks, only two rescues. I watch the troubleshooting channels, and I just feel dissapointed. I want to help out, but that would likely be interpreted as unwanted advertising with how the rules are set up. All in all though, I really feel like support is playing a game of twister with one player, itself. They say it's exhausting and stressful at times, I've asked if I could help in-game and I'm in a queue for discussion but my confidence is fairly low at this point.

 

In the event of legitimate problems, I can see the need for GM's to assist, but if this is something that another player can do, then a player should be required to do so. While I can understand the issues regarding favoritism, I do believe that NQ needs to turn off easy mode support and tell these players to get their feet wet with the community, because the response I've received so far has been not very appetizing.

 

When NQ (hopefully) stops this come release, a lot of people are going to be stuck and not know what to do. If they quit, it's unfortunate, but this pre-"release" state is where organizations can really grow their roots, and I feel like I'm being hamstrung. I don't like waiting in this queue to hopefully get seen by NovaQuark, but that's what I'm left to do for now. 

 

Come to think of it, wasn't this supposed to be a more of a player driven game? Wasn't that puzzle supposed to take years to solve, and here we did it in a couple weeks? Yes there was stuff before beta involved, but I think this player base has been vastly underestimated.

And no, I'm not here to pick on NQ. I'm pointing out a problem, in fact, I knew this would be an issue a long time ago which was why I started E&ESAR to begin with. I'd like to solve it on my own as a member of the community, but I'm not being allowed to, so we're here with support because this was allowed to happen. Like a lot of people, I would have blazed a different path than NQ did, probably starting in Alpha 2. I'm not a developer though so the best I can do is offer my support, well wishes, and hopefully this can be taken as somewhat constructive feedback.

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I see the main problem with people asking for in game rescue right now is just how the communication system works. It is really hard to talk to people in game right now, especially players who you don’t know in real life. The only starting global channel is support which is always too crowded with new players asking how to place their speeders for anyone more experienced to try to learn about other chat channels like 911. This leaves almost all serious global chat to be done on discord, either the official one or various org discords.

 

Ideally new players would use local channels to ask for help more to clear up the support chat but local chat is so hard to manage. It’s hard to know when there’s a message because the channel bars are so wide that I can’t even see the local notification dot when I’m in support chat. It doesn’t help that I have to press enter, then hit tab, then hit the tiny arrow on the left, then click on local to respond to any message. The separate channels for private messages and bartering further complicate the issue. I’ve had the problem many times where I’m trading with a player and we keep getting swapped to different channels and having to restart our discussion. 

A lot of the content in this game comes from social interaction. A revamped chat system would help so many other aspects.

 

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Even tho it got a lot better from what it used to be, the support channel still a joke, and biggest joke it’s when people can clearly see that some are abusing the channel to move themselves and their ships around from planet to planet without ever flying it..... some of us have complained about this “extra” service but the facts are simple, they don’t want to loose more people so they give in to keep people happy, even tho they are doing more harm than good.

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20 minutes ago, Iorail said:

Even tho it got a lot better from what it used to be, the support channel still a joke, and biggest joke it’s when people can clearly see that some are abusing the channel to move themselves and their ships around from planet to planet without ever flying it..... some of us have complained about this “extra” service but the facts are simple, they don’t want to loose more people so they give in to keep people happy, even tho they are doing more harm than good.

Maybe they were told to be loose with the Teleporting until the 3months (+1 free month) sub cycle is over so they get as many resubs as possible before "cracking down".  Thats my small theory anyway.

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