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This game is too easy. Some Thoughts and concerns.


Guest Keejhle

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Guest Keejhle

Dear fellow Noveans, 

       

My name is Keejhle and I've been a relatively active player since pre-alpha almost 3 years ago. I found the concept of this game something absolutely fascinating and being an avid eve online as well as a minecraft player I was captivated at what NQ were striving to create. I would like to discuss some growing concerns I have while I've been participating in the beta.

 

I want to also make this clear in no way am i here to "bash NQ" but rather the opposite, I love this game and am consistently amazed with what the team produces. I just want to be able to voice my opinion about some features of games current state and hopes for the future so that when we reach a main release the game will be more enjoyable for myself and hopefully others. 

 

My biggest concern right now is just how easy the game is. Now look when we were in Alpha we all pretty much knew there would be a server reset and the ease of access to everything was all apart of trying to test the wide variety of features in game and give the testing players a full experience. Now going into the beta and hearing there would be no reset going into the main release this continued ease of access is downright frightening. Planets are getting mined out, INDIVIDUAL players with in a couple weeks are able capable of building industry complexes that can pump out the rarest and most difficult to build items in the game ridiculously fast and easy. The only thing standing in your way is getting blown up by the notorious battle cubes floating around the pipelines. 

 

When I first got into this game I thought things like getting to space should be difficult and be a real achievement.  As of the current state I can slap a xs space engine and some other elements on my starter hover craft and in like an hour I'm in space. With in 2 weeks playing moderately I was in command of a M-core ship and capable of pretty much the entire content of the game. This didn't feel like an accomplishment, it felt like I was in creative mode doing whatever I want. 

 

Now to offer in my opinion some simple solutions to these issues of burning out the content.

      

     -Lock more things behind skills.

          Say a player wants to go into the game and start a business making engines. Right now this isn't possible because with little effort anyone can create and industry pad that pumps out engines of all sizes with relative ease. There's no need for a niche engine guy, or niche refining guy, or niche smelting guy etc... you get the point. All players have access to all things very quickly making it difficult for someone to actually make a business in game doing a specific thing. Why pay someone else to do it when you can do it yourself pretty easily.  Now what if the skill system forced players to dedicate time training skills just to do those very basic things. Like you can't build an Assembler M without training a specific set of skills to get there. Now there's a market for people with those skills. You won't see the massive industry complexes we currently see in game without large coordination between lots of players and taking lots of time. Skill locking more game content will diversify the player base, force cooperation, and inevitably feed a market economy that the Devs speak about so much. 

 

          - Make stuff cost more resources

The low tier items like xs cores and and containers are fine. Things like space engines, fuel, and industry elements should be far more expensive though. And the high tier stuff like TCUs, Warp, and Anti-grav are way to easy to construct once you've snowballed into your industry complex. 

 

         -Last, We need a server reset.

We are beta testers right now. You are a TESTER. This is not the games final state and I hope to God as you should as well that it isn't. At the rate territory is being claimed on Alioth (which is an exponential growth might it add) there will be nothing unclaimed within the next 3-4 months. TCUs are just too easy to build for a large organization. The other planets will fill up soon after. The only solution is a clean wipe. NQ is scared to talk about these because the players freak out sometimes. But honestly we should want and expect wipes. They will only make the game better for the main release.

 

We are here to help NQ make a better game. I hope the dream comes to fruition and I'm constantly impressed by the dedication the Dev team has to fulfilling this goal. I will continue to play and continue to enjoy this game and hope all you do too. 

 

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I really dont understand why some people are so negative concerning a wipe. Beta testing involves alot of balancing espically after significant content additions and if some of that rebalancing is significant enough, only a wipe restores the intent moving forward. I'm not leaning either direction but in beta, I would not rule it out. I want this game that I have been following for years to last for a decade plus. Just because we are paying a sub, I dont think we are entitled to never realizing a wipe.

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2 hours ago, Guest Keejhle said:

 

 

There's no need for a niche engine guy, or niche refining guy, or niche smelting guy etc... you get the point. All players have access to all things very quickly making it difficult for someone to actually make a business in game doing a specific thing. Why pay someone else to do it when you can do it yourself pretty easily.  Now what if the skill system forced players to dedicate time training skills just to do those very basic things. Like you can't build an Assembler M without training a specific set of skills to get there. Now there's a market for people with those skills. You won't see the massive industry complexes we currently see in game without large coordination between lots of players and taking lots of time. Skill locking more game content will diversify the player base, force cooperation, and inevitably feed a market economy that the Devs speak about so much. 

 

 

 

 

 

This is exactly what I talked about in one of my videos (see below, especially timestamp 15:00) where I described exactly the same problems with the game right now. I also talked about that in one of the threads here and was promptly attacked by a resident White Knight here who shall not be named (and apparently spends all his time in the forums).

It seems the adhd kiddies do not get that the longevity of the game is jeopardized when everyone can do everything and large orgs can do it in a massive scale with ease - so there are no specializations (or niches as you put it) in the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Agreed, considering that I was able to relatively casually mine enough resources for a literal fleet of 10 M and 10 L core ships with anti gravity systems, pulsors and warp drives and at least 5 warp beacons (crafting time not included).

 

Had 200k cobaltite, 50-100k of each of the other t4s, 300k petalite and 50-150k of the other t3s...

 

But then, that was also due to the absurd ease of scanning 3 territories at a time with a 3 territory scanner ship, and later doubling it up with a second tri-scanner ship.

 

Territory scanners need a huge nerf. I think they should be locked behind skills.. at least a month's worth. And be a lot harder to make. And maybe change from a hex based scan system to scanning all the ores within a ~2km radius. Triangulation would be needed before locations could be even roughly determined; not this lottery winner system where one can instantly drop a TCU.

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I'm not sure locking things behind skills necessarily creates a market. Will new players be frustrated they cant do something, while vets just pump out the same number of parts that would have existed anyways? Though perhaps there is more that can be done to balance.

People shouldn't be afraid of a reset, it could do a lot to help. It only bothers people that cant let go of whatever advantage they think they are owed from being earlier.

 

Have a nice day.

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2 hours ago, Avonthorn said:

I really dont understand why some people are so negative concerning a wipe.

 

Too many loud voices are way too attached to their riches, many of which were obtained using unbalanced game options and mechanics which in the process destroyed a good portion of the games ability to facilitate it's development. Not saying ppl exploited anything here, but NQ made some bad choices, were told they were bad choices and went ahead anyway and then found they made some bad choices ;) 

Combine this with their focus on revenue and as a result sacrificing their ability to actually balance and restructure as needed (including wipes which are absolutely normal and part of game development at this stage) and you have a recipe for a hollowed out game only a few weeks into it's beta soft launch.

 

A wipe, once important balance passes are in the game,  where we keep our blueprints and see accrued talent points returned to the pool for a respec would be good for the game, it will weed out some of the debris and some of the abandoned structures. It will potentially weed out some who focus more on being able to say they "own all this" and not really partake in the game and at at the same time create an opportunity for NQ to push the game to new players coming in on the subjective idea of an "even playing field" (which is really not a thing but too many think it is so why not make use of that sentiment and gain more revenue through it).

It wil certainly draw some tears form big orgs who invested a lot of time in their infrastructure but those wil bounce back even when they may do a lot of crying about it in the process. NQ setting up a "no wipe unless we really have to" expectation was a mistake but at the same time I really feel that, once the balance passes are done, it very much defendable that they "have to" wipe in order for these passes to take proper effect (which is what I do expect will eventually happen)..

 

 

Regarding Talents, there are a lot of talents now which really do not have any effective use. I'd agree it would be good to have certain items locked behind talents and then consecutive levels increase the effectiveness of those elements..

For instance, for Territory Scanner:
"Scanning Calibration" - will increase the range at which you can detect ore, increasing 20% each level where Level 5 also unlocks;

"Territory Scanner Calibration" - Unlock Territory Scanner and reduce scan time by 15% each level, level 4 will also unlock;

"Multi Scan Operation" -  Allow for one extra scanner to be operated simultaneously and remotely per level within a total of 7 scanners at L5 allowing a player to scan a tile and it's surrounding tiles with one scan action (3,4,5,6,7 respectively)

And for Warp drives:
"Space Engine Calibration" - increase ability to calibrate and optimize space engine speed with 20% per level, ending at 30K for level5 which also unlocks;

"Warp Drive Calibration" -  unlocks Warp Drives and increase ability to calibrate Warp drives before jumping by 15% each level, level 4 will also unlock;

"Warp Cell Efficiency" -  Decrease number of warp cells required to travel by 15% per level

 

NQ pretty much copied the EVE skill system but forgot to understand how that system is really a rather smart chain of skills which provides a logical and sensible progress for players as they get deeper in the game, unlocking abilities as they go and as the player's experience will allow him/her to use such skill effectively. I'd also really like to see NQ introduce skill books like  EVE has as it will remove a lot of clutter when skills for which books are not available can easily be filtered out.

Skill books also actually create roles within organizations where you'd have players tasked with keeping org books in stock and distributed as needed.

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2 hours ago, blazemonger said:

It wil certainly draw some tears form big orgs who invested a lot of time in their infrastructure but those wil bounce back even when they may do a lot of crying about it in the process.

Yet, big orgs (who indeed bounce back) not only meaningful entities in game. And not only voices against.

 

Actualy, its reasonable to say, "middle class" people (ironicly as in typical IRL problems) will suffer worst -- all active solo/small group players, both old and new, who tried to relativly keep up with big guys by hard work and preparing some reserves for future. They will be completly gutted, but they obviously have much less "staying power" and "raw muscle" then big orgs to go back in action and many will be feeling extreamly exausted and even cheated of their hard earned assets.

 

Per example, by local millions and kilotons of ore standards I relativly "poor" and usualy deeply frown upon hysterical "i will quit" things as argument... But to be super honest, if they wipe like before "release", deleting all ore I mined (and other work done), I will very seriously consider if I want to play DU again and re-invest all this time. Just no more stamina. On personal level.

 

NQ obviously made chain of insanly bad and unresponsable choices (with JC sometimes barely understanding how his game really played, living in world of fantasies in a way), that poisoned game and now we all paying price (generaly in both cases of non wipe scenario and wipe scenario). Its just difference between slow "necrosis" damage and shock bloody fountains damage.

 

I really don't know how they can repair it. All options are just tormenting lesser evil things (that a quite not lesser).

 

 

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Did you guys realize that this is a sandbox? It has a economy and skill system like eve, but the goals are totaly different. Dual Univere is about creating stuff. Building Worlds. While eve is simply about domination. So balancing and slow progress in eve is much more important, since there is nothing else than the "game of numbers and ranks" While in Dual Universe the economy and progression is just the foundation of the creative experience. Your Skills and Resources are the tools to build your world. Why should this essential part be locked with massive time gates or grind? If you have fun on waiting for something or doing the same thing over and over to make a tiny progress. Well, play eve. But if you want a blast of a Sandbox-Spacegame Dual Universe is the thing. Because it does NOT make you wait for the good stuff forever. Because it does NOT force you to invest hours of grind. Because you do NOT need multiple accounts and characters. All this eve madness does not exist and thats great. There is no need for Dual to be more hardcore. This game is not about competition in the first place. Its about creation.

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I've played for a while, but I'm not continuing subbing for the time being. I will probably pick it up on release whenever that is.

 

I think they should do what FDev did with Elite Dangerous and do a full wipe on 'release proper'. I had millions in ED great ship etc, but lost all that on the wipe when we moved from beta to release. I didn't mind, the game was easy in beta to get things, on release it was a little harder but I didn't mind that, the game was equal to everyone then.

 

Orgs can be an issue sometimes, they have to make it attractive to single players as well. That is hard to achieve though.

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I have been playing for 3 weeks and What the OP is saying rings true to me.

I have been going through my talents in a fairly balanced way and after 3 weeks I'm reasonably good at lots of things.  I have decided that I like ship building and I want to do PvP also.  So, I had a look at the talents to see what I could do to specialise.    I thought that maybe as well as ship building I could offer an upgrade service.  For example, I come visit you and upgrade all your fuel tanks for a fee.  However, its as the OP says.  Most players can upgrade their own tanks as well as be skilled in other areas as well.  Specialising does not look as though its going to be as viable as I thought it might be.

As, some others have pointed out the resource duplication that some players participated in seems to have unbalanced things somewhat, so, I can see the desire by some for a wipe.  I can see both sides though.  The reason I waited for beta before getting the game was that beta (as far as I am aware) generally means the game is feature complete and has some bugs which need to be ironed out.  The game feels to me that it is actually in alpha.

I hope they can get things sorted.  Maybe they will have to make a 6th or maybe 7th tier so that it takes say 6 months to reach 6th tier in a skill and 12 months to tier 7?

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2 hours ago, Underhook said:

The reason I waited for beta before getting the game was that beta (as far as I am aware) generally means the game is feature complete and has some bugs which need to be ironed out.  The game feels to me that it is actually in alpha.

 

There are alot of opinions on what "Alpha" means, "Beta" means etc. One of my favorite games out right now is in Beta and has been for years and years. It is quite polished and should be considered out of beta or gold release by now but that dev team choose that route. Even out of beta and in full production, content to keep the game fresh and push end content is typically added and this shouldnt be only added in the beta phase. I consider the "sunset" phase is where the game has been out for a long time, the dev team has lost interest and they are simply in maintenance mode. Sunset phase or post-production is where I would expect no more features and simply seeing maintenance to keep the server(s) up and critical issues addressed. 

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Weren’t loads of things locked back in the early alpha? L space engines, I remember, not being placeable by me at one point. 
 

A problem is mining is too fast because they didn’t want to do automated mining. 
 

they couldn’t make mining realistically slow since you have to baby sit each litre you get. 
so instead you get to pull in 200M3 per second per player. 
 

they should have screwed the ridiculous voxel based mining and just had extraction point mining with a low extraction rate that requires a permanent base set up to protect the resources.  
 

means logistics to empty the skips and bring the resources home would have to be thought about and that would have made resource supply lines and pickup routes a thing and made regions of the planets actually valuable and worth fighting for. 
 

the game is broken in that respect. 

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NQ sped up progress and acquiring materials substantially once they knew they had to start pulling in revenue and seem to have felt that the game was to slow to be "accessible" enough for the general public. The surface ores made the game look like a constant Xmas tree and it was one of those quick "fixes" instead of taking a bit of time and design an actual mechanic around it they just dropped surface rocks everywhere.

 

It would have been real cool if there had been patches of ores which would have a variation of value and amounts that appears in "patches" and might even have things like gems and other valuables in the future. It would have given us something to hunt for and eventually fight over but NQ choose to just drop rocks everywhere "so you do not have to mine if you do not want to", which obviously is nonsense as the gained resources are such that it do not get you ver far unless you  are OK wil running around picking up 20L of ore per sock for hours and hours..

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11 hours ago, Emptiness said:

Agreed, considering that I was able to relatively casually mine enough resources for a literal fleet of 10 M and 10 L core ships with anti gravity systems, pulsors and warp drives and at least 5 warp beacons (crafting time not included).

 

Had 200k cobaltite, 50-100k of each of the other t4s, 300k petalite and 50-150k of the other t3s...

 

But then, that was also due to the absurd ease of scanning 3 territories at a time with a 3 territory scanner ship, and later doubling it up with a second tri-scanner ship.

 

Territory scanners need a huge nerf. I think they should be locked behind skills.. at least a month's worth. And be a lot harder to make. And maybe change from a hex based scan system to scanning all the ores within a ~2km radius. Triangulation would be needed before locations could be even roughly determined; not this lottery winner system where one can instantly drop a TCU.

Okay, lets be real though: there's nothing casual about this much mining. Casual is the people that log in once a day and mine just enough for what they immediately need and maybe not even that. Casual miners also don't have what is, objectively, the best mining setup in the game with a triple scanner ship, let alone two, and they aren't getting any T4-T5 ore, let alone excesses of 50-100k. 

 

Mining may very well be too easy, but I think the more pressing issue is that there isn't any permanent loss of elements and there's nothing else to really do on any kind of scale except for mining, hence why everyone has so much raw ore.

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I'm new, 3 or 4 days since I paid my sub, downloaded and installed after the obligatory 3 or 4 hours of watching YouTube (where I heard about this as it's not on Steam).

 

I'm up to an Assembler large and at least one of each of the component refineries/smelter/3d printer etc.

 

To easy for me? Probably, my limiting issue was storage and learning what makes what after that it's just maths. I don't mind mining, its actually therapeutic for me a lot of the time and mining in games such as Eve, Empy, hell even 7d2d are all similar and it lets me move along at a fairly quick pace.

 

For a truly casual player though I really don't know, there is no instant gratification mining gets you enough mats to build, leave a little in the pot for the next size up and off to mine again, I sold off the result of the first Node I mined out and bitterly regretted that when I looked at the ramp up in requirements as you build bigger (Assembler Large was a nasty surprise), where a 2 or 3 hours a day player will fit in I don't know, will they ever amass enough ore to sell and build and have a buffer for ship losses, as soon as the push for PvP ramps up, it's going to turn into a Gankfest and with 'Automining' on the roadmap, well where does selling ore as a small player sit in the future?

 

If a new player can't get some gratification after playing for a few days, will they hang around or just move on - with nothing invested in the game and 20 quid to test it out, it's no big loss to just walk away?

 

 

 

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22 hours ago, Guest Keejhle said:

But honestly we should want and expect wipes.

 

I think just about everyone wanted and expected wipes.  But we should also want and expect them to announce a final wipe, and stick by it if at all possible, right?

 

That happened.  The shoe has dropped.  Elvis has left the building.  Personally i thought they should have waited until they were ready to officially launch the game.  But they didn't.  C'est la vie.

 

I've been waiting years for a chance to build stuff in this game without it getting wiped a few months later.  A lot of people have been waiting a long time.  There's just so much more to do in this game then just measuring your progress against other people.  That isn't everyone's number one priority.  And luckily i think NQ understands that.

 

The idea that everything will be claimed and mined in a few months is just a non-issue.  We only have one starting system right now,  they're going to add more, hopefully a lot more. 

 

On the subject of balance i definitely agree it's too easy now.  Although i don't think the solution is as simple as everyone would like.  Do they tune the game to the players who chew through it the fastest?  Or tune it to the players who take it slow?  or maybe meet in the middle?  No matter what they do two out of three groups are pissed.

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It would be interesting if there was some mechanic in place to force specialization.

 

Something like, "you are allowed to specialize into 2 types of element production and handling buffs at a given time.  You may transfer to another specialization on a semi-lengthy cooldown."

 

 

So hypothetically a player could have the skill points to do everything, but would become time-gated without collaboration, driving the convenience economy of just paying someone else to do the thing.

 

 

And then, perhaps every 1 real calendar year, the player's account would gain another specialization slot as a loyalty perk, up to a certain max (still below being able to do ALL skills simultaneously).

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16 hours ago, Avonthorn said:

There are alot of opinions on what "Alpha" means, "Beta" means etc. One of my favorite games out right now is in Beta and has been for years and years. It is quite polished and should be considered out of beta or gold release by now but that dev team choose that route. Even out of beta and in full production, content to keep the game fresh and push end content is typically added and this shouldnt be only added in the beta phase. I consider the "sunset" phase is where the game has been out for a long time, the dev team has lost interest and they are simply in maintenance mode. Sunset phase or post-production is where I would expect no more features and simply seeing maintenance to keep the server(s) up and critical issues addressed. 

 

Ya talking about warframe by chance?

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I feel like you're not quite meshing with what NQ appears to be creating here.  They're creating a virtual galaxy for players to do what they want in.  That's why there's no NPCs, no arbitrary limits on PvP outside of safe zones (plus plans to eliminate the safe zone around every planet outside the starting three), and eventually no market bots.  There's no "winning" or "losing" and thus no point to declaring something as "too easy."  The niche roles will happen "naturally," as not every player is going to want to interact with every possible gameplay loop.  If your Org does a lot of PvP, someone is going to have to make sure that ammo, fuel, and scrap are in plentiful supply.  BAM, there's your support role.  Not everyone is going to want to spend time designing ships that are effective in combat, so someone is going to have to do that work.  BAM, there's your "ship guy."  Will there be some Orgs that won't do that?  Of course, but Org A where everyone is doing a little bit of everything all at once is not going to have any inherent advantage over Org B who has specialists filling specific roles.  In fact, it's quite possible that Org B will have the advantage because their specialists can focus on their roles and not dilute their time, energy, and resources across multiple tasks.

 

DU is, above all, centered around "emergent gameplay".  Which means it's up to us, not NQ, to create these niches or roles.

 

As a side note, I definitely agree that territory scanners need to be nerfed in some way.  At the current rate, players are going to strip entire systems of T3+ ores before NQ can roll out the next system.  I have a couple of relatively easy fixes for that:

 

• Every active scanner within a certain range of an active scanner increases the total scan time of all scanners in range by an exponential amount.  So, sure, you can plop down your 3 scanners at a hex intersection, but instead of it taking 15 minutes to complete the scan, it's going to take more than 2 days.  The lore behind this affect can simply be that each scanner is interfering with the other and thus it takes each one much longer to sift through the "noise" generated by the other scanners.

• Just like cores, the number of active scanners you can have at once is limited, and can be expanded via talents, but there will still be a set maximum per player and org.  This will help prevent the "drop a scanner, start it, hop over a hex, drop a scanner, start it, hop over a hex..." process that people are using currently to scan hundreds of hexes a day.

 

Those two changes, which should be relatively easy to implement, would pretty much bring the current process of strip mining moons and planets to a screeching halt while still making scanners useful.

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1 minute ago, Teufelaffe said:

I feel like you're not quite meshing with what NQ appears to be creating here.  They're creating a virtual galaxy for players to do what they want in.  That's why there's no NPCs, no arbitrary limits on PvP outside of safe zones (plus plans to eliminate the safe zone around every planet outside the starting three), and eventually no market bots.  There's no "winning" or "losing" and thus no point to declaring something as "too easy."  The niche roles will happen "naturally," as not every player is going to want to interact with every possible gameplay loop...

 

DU is, above all, centered around "emergent gameplay".  Which means it's up to us, not NQ, to create these niches or roles...

 

Unfortunately, I don't agree with this sentiment.

 

These emergent gameplay concepts don't happen spontaneously. No, these niches will not appear "naturally" simply because some players "don't want to do stuff". No, it isn't just "up to us" to create roles and build emergent gameplay concepts.

 

It isn't up to us to "mesh" with what NQ is creating, it's up to NQ to create something that works with these gameplay loops and has a structure that encourages specialization. Emergent gameplay doesn't just happen out of a void. That's not what "emergent gameplay" really means. 

 

It actually is up to NQ to cultivate these concepts.  

 

The idea that specialization will happen naturally isn't grounded in any evidence. The fact that the game as it exists now doesn't "mesh" with the NQ's vision is on them...players won't conform to this vision just because, it requires careful rules to create this virtual galaxy which NQ doesn't seem to understand...which is the OPs point. 

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