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Let's talk DU quits


le_souriceau

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2 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

Please do not take this the wrong way, but one of the things I personally find strange still is precisely the way you reacted to my suggestion of using the E key in selecting a voxel brush. I get you may not have played a lot of MMOs or know game design but what I describe is pretty much the industry standard for implementing the UX for things like this; Have the basic choices for a function using a (repeated) key press and bring up additional/more advanced functionality  by press-hold on the same key which then brings up a (radial) menu for this purpose.


Don't worry one bit - I always try to assume positive intent. ? The key functionality you described is fairly ubiquitous across a lot of MMOs, yes, but I just wanted to acknowledge your suggestion. Apologies if I came across as shallow/trite!! (I've gotta think up a better way to verbally 'thumbs up' something.)

 

1 hour ago, blazemonger said:

Phew.. and thanks.. !! All good ;)

 


You're welcome! Sorry for the mini heart attack, there. ?

 

1 hour ago, blazemonger said:

Many of us have been around the game a long time and feel passionately about it which sometimes gets carried a bit far maybe but, especially when you have been around MMOs and see the way NQ often stumbles around and makes tings way harder on themselves than needed can be very frustrating, especially when there is zero engagement with the community basically just trying to point these things out.

 

I'm honestly quite touched by the high level of player passion I've seen around here so far! (Even the spicier posts demonstrate nothing more than a huge desire to see DU reach its full potential, to me.)

Thanks again for being great, blaze. It's been nice chatting/learning about what matters to you.

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5 hours ago, NQ-Naunet said:

I should give you a disclaimer: I'm attempting to understand this as a person on my third week at NQ and a non-programmer, so "snap together" is the best verbiage I have at the moment. ?

It's definitely more complicated than that, and I'm currently attempting to get a programmer to explain it to me in a way that programming-savvy players can appreciate.

 

I think what they're saying is that IF we had the ability to adjust the position of, and rotate elements with more precision, then we wouldn't need the canopy glass triangles to "snap together".

 

Right now when you hold CTRL elements can be moved in larger increments.  What we really need is another modifier key, that allows you to move and rotate them in much smaller increments also.

 

Having elements snap together is nice.  But i think to most builders, that's a far less important feature then the ability to position them with precision.

 

The square glass panels we have now are already insanely frustrating to get into position.  So if it's just a matter of snapping together easily, i say let us have the triangles, we can handle a little frustration. ?

 

I'm super excited to hear more about this either way though, so please do tell us more when you can.

 

In general i would love to hear more about all the problems.  Understanding why we can't have stuff makes it SOOOO much easier to accept.  The biggest one for me would be the "voxel vector editor", why is NQ hesitant to implement it?

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The biggest frusteration for me right now is the terraforming and building system with its lack of refinement, poor expalantions and just lack of tools.
I draw allot of comparisions for building ships on here to something like Avorion, which is also a voxel like ship building game and the tools that has are amazing for ship designs that I would love to see incorperated in here. Some probably are not possible without making the voxel block be able to go smaller. I would also hope we may get voxels with elemental properties someday, to give us allot more flexability in the design of our ships, nothing like trying to go with a specific design and have to stick wings all over that dont go with it, or these giant box engines, its painful when other voxel like games seem to handle it allot better.

 

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This may or may not be helpful but I personally enjoy the direction of all the development. The only thing I'm not enjoying is the tech side, hopefully there will be a lot of optimization. I run a really high end system and I still struggle with it. In my opinion they have a lot to do and have been chipping away at it at a good pace and in a good way. My vote would be stay the course, really like what's been done and my excitement hasn't lost any momentum. 

 

I'm not sure why people are upset that certain aspects of the game aren't fully developed. This is a beta. That seems to me to be the point

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1 hour ago, DylTheRipper13 said:

This may or may not be helpful but I personally enjoy the direction of all the development. The only thing I'm not enjoying is the tech side, hopefully there will be a lot of optimization. I run a really high end system and I still struggle with it. In my opinion they have a lot to do and have been chipping away at it at a good pace and in a good way. My vote would be stay the course, really like what's been done and my excitement hasn't lost any momentum. 

 

I'm not sure why people are upset that certain aspects of the game aren't fully developed. This is a beta. That seems to me to be the point

Because NQ is directly asking what is causing ppl to leave or want to leave. And ppl are letting them know. If you haven't notice the lack of activity in the forums, discord, in game. Thats great that you're enjoying the game but they notice it as much as we did and thats what they're trying to figure out. Player retention is key for games to survive an a few ppl happy with the game does not keep it afloat.

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I don't intend to quit the game, but one of the things that has bothered me since I started the game is NQ basically ignoring the playerbase when we explain how mechanics will be used and then implementing shoddy fixes. This happened with PvP, market bots and territory units just to name a few. If you could still see the alpha forums you would see players laying out the problems weeks before the implementation. 

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9 hours ago, NQ-Naunet said:

The one thing I can guarantee all of you right now is that JC (and everyone else at NQ) cares deeply about Dual Universe and its players

About DU for sure, about it's players? Not so much

 

Have a look at how market 15 was handled. Or some of the last posts in ATV forum.

Or the vast majority of posts in the alpha forums where ppl pointed out problems, some NQ acknowledging it and promising it'll get looked at but nothing was done about it. Sometimes up until now, years after the post.

 

Caring indeed 

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13 hours ago, DylTheRipper13 said:

I'm not sure why people are upset that certain aspects of the game aren't fully developed. This is a beta. That seems to me to be the point

 

The definition of a 'beta' has dramatically shifted over the past 15 years - at least in the gaming world - the definition  remains:

A Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.

 

15 years ago an MMO beta was a largely finished game. Maybe some end game content missing, some placeholder assets, a few quests unfinished, balance issues and so on...

 

But you'd get a full vertical slice of the game. Meaning - every single core feature of the game was functional. For example, Anarchy Online went into beta in 2000 and released in 2001. By the time it was beta, the bulk of the game was done - it was buggy, unbalanced and riddled with exploits - but the content was there. 

 

Now you have DU 'beta' - and core features of the game are actually non existent entirely and those that exist are all dysfunctional in some way. There isn't a single thing in the game right now that I would consider ready for release. 

 

DU is by no means a 'beta' in a traditional definition - there is no justification for calling any product that is missing fundamental core features a 'beta'. By definition beta is feature complete, but buggy. DU is at best Alpha. It doesn't matter what NQ choose to call it - it's Alpha. By definition.

 

So that's why people are complaining. You can't really sell DU as a 'beta' and have so many features not just 'not developed' - but apparently still in the drawing board stages. 

 

All the interviews with JC and the rest of NQ staff have been pretty indicative that they do not have any idea how atmo pvp will actually work, how avatar pvp will work or how territory control pvp will work - I don't mean that they don't have it in game - I mean that they appear to have no idea how it will work at all besides theory crafting how they 'envision' it. It's gotten no further than what JC was talking about during the kickstarter in 2016.

 

Anyone with any history in development looking at just the planned features on https://upvote.dualuniverse.game/ sees a solid 2 years of work. When those are complete, assuming DU doesn't go the way of Worlds Adrift - then the game will be in Beta - meaning another year of polish to iron out the bugs.

 

So players have every right to be upset about how incomplete this beta is. 

 

With that said - the harsh reality of life is that games are not developed for free. Given the staff levels and funding, and expected burn rate, it's extremely likely that the decision to launch Alpha in the current state was to create some kind of cashflow - even if only to further use that cashflow to secure loans and investments for future development. I do not blame NQ for launching the 'beta' as is, or for charging for it, AWS doesn't host their servers out of charity and NQ devs do not pay their rent with their passion for game development.  

 

I do think that the bulk of the community gets that point as well - but are still disappointed by the current state of the game. 

 

That's exactly where I am. I am disappointed by DU.  I kickstarted, and have 2 paid accounts on top of my 2 pre-paid ones, and will keep the subs going because despite the fact that the game isn't in the state where I want it to be - I realize that it will never get to a state that I want it to be in without continued cashflow. On the other hand I can understand why someone may not wish to pay monthly for a game they don't even log into anymore....

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3 hours ago, DylTheRipper13 said:

This may or may not be helpful but I personally enjoy the direction of all the development. The only thing I'm not enjoying is the tech side, hopefully there will be a lot of optimization. I run a really high end system and I still struggle with it. In my opinion they have a lot to do and have been chipping away at it at a good pace and in a good way. My vote would be stay the course, really like what's been done and my excitement hasn't lost any momentum. 

 

I'm not sure why people are upset that certain aspects of the game aren't fully developed. This is a beta. That seems to me to be the point

 

Years ago, there were more of us. Right now, there is less of us and the game is dying as days go by. Population isn't increasing and it has been decreasing dramatically and this will continue should the game is to "continue with it's course" until there isn't enough left to support the game. If you have a school with COVID outbreak and you let it "run the course", by tomorrow, all those kids will be dead. You solve the problem, you don't run the course! You don't see the problem? 

 

In order for emergent gameplay to take place in this game, they are looking to reach a "critical mass" of players. How will this be possible if the game is dying and have shed a lot of people like World War II? The game is not getting critical mass, it is in critical condition! Furthermore, by next year, it will have a competition so it will shed more blood.

 

We've made some good points, and god damn, listen to them! Most people in this game hate the building editor so how can you sell it as a building game? It is the most complicated building editor that I have tried requiring the most effort. What is rewarding is putting the time to create something and applying your creativity, not wasting the time learning and going through the unnecessarily complicated process of building because the editor is designed that way -- it is lacking of intuitive tools! it's like you have passion in writing in Chinese language(中文) but instead of typing your piece of writing in a word editor in a computer, you are gonna use a brush and ink and draw the calligraphy using Traditional characters (or perhaps Shang Dynasty characters). Real art man, real art to express your idea/context! It should not be done this way man, ****ing use a computer! You see, the sense of reward here is putting the time to craft the literary work creatively and personally your own, not going through the process of writing itself (the process that I'm talking about is grabbing the brush and drawing each characters when you could have just typed them. This has nothing to do with creative writing at all!). Simplify the editor! As someone who also have passion in writing and marketing, I don't want to be writing with my blood, lol! If that is the process, I'll find a computer!

 

This is a beta and it needs to be course corrected before it's too late! 

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No wonder people leaving this, i subscribed yesterday and today i unsubscribed it, why i have brand new Legion i7 with 2080 GPU and this game burns my CPU and GPU like it would do some crypto mining :) also NovaLogic and Xsolla feels little shady for my taste.

This game was over hyped, but lucky for me, i lost now only 20 bucks not like other they supported it from the beginning.

 

And i don't trust NovaLogic, lot of people have problems on new PC with the software, but no where is a solution posted.

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hello
the game and its developers are currently doing everything they can to make sure that you don't want to play D.U. anymore!
out of our organisation many have stopped because of many mistakes!
- mining of ore is server day by day depending on whether it works or not (missing parameters!)
- industry has rdm failures after server restarts
- the construction tools are not fully developed
- errors when flying ships ( laggs, bugs, failure of parts )
- Trade ingame not possible as there is no need
- the auction bots senseless!!!!
- pvp is the biggest joke !! ( 1 xs ship can kill L core ships easy but the other way round almost no changse )
- the new function of space ship wrecks what is the 100 max in the whole game LOL
for this you cannot salvage and claim other ships now

 

I have the feeling that NQ is throwing a simple rigged game at us to generate cash with the 3 month subscriptions ?♂️
and NOTHING really does NOT do anything to make the game more stable and better running or to give better content than digging in the dirt for days or piling up voxels on top of each other

 

the worst thing in my eyes is that with every "server maintenance" or "fix patch" the game becomes more and more unplayable more bugs than before etc  

this should actually be different!
i will cancel my subscription like the rest of the orga 

D.U. is as good as death 
I'd rather play Elite Dangerous again ?♂️

 

 

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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Main issue is everything is too easy since, you can't make mining or industry challenging since no matter what someone only has to design an optimal factory once and take a blueprint and digging rocks is never ever going to be challenging, only risk can add challenge. Lack of risk is why we blow through everything so quickly we amass resources quickly and never lose them there is no politics as there is nothing to attack nothing to defend.

 

Other thing there is no challenge in ship design, hoping power system will make more complexity but currently everything can be solved just by throwing on more elements the only time had to design for trade offs was in a warp shuttle trying to design for max capability within a weight restriction.

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Hi All,

 

I'm inactive enough now on DU to probably qualify as a soft-Quit, though I occasionally peek back (like now) to see if any new big things have dropped.  Here's why I moved on:

 

 

It is easy to find an org.  This DU has done well.  However beyond making the initial connection to a group, I found that things to do with said group were scarce-  and not engaging enough to be a draw that could pull me back night after night like other MMOs.

 

The most fun I had in DU came from two things.  One was selling BPs of my ship designs to strangers via the Support chat, and offering engine tune-ups via my engine handling talents (this was heavily limited by the nature of needing access to build mode on the subject construct, however).

 

The other was flying rescue missions to the at-one-time-abundant number of crashed pilots with busted up ships.  That was fulfilling and also, VERY SOCIAL (I can't stress this part enough).

 

 

100% of my fun content from this game had its origins in the Support chat channel.  Because that's where these 'Emergent missions' would pop up.

 

Anyways.  I remain interested in the project and I can see myself playing regularly again if there was just more social gameplay possible.

 

Things like being able to apply upgrades to other people's constructs at the cost of some material, so that running an upgrade shop becomes a completely viable activity on its own.  Basically more mechanics that let players positively interact for tangible in-game benefits.

 

 

TLDR:

 

Fun:

 

  • Flight, Atmo + Space is pretty good.  B+/A- (some issues with the atmo flight model behaving incorrectly with small bank angles, but otherwise good)
  • Ship Design, fun, would be better with more constraints (cross-section affecting drag is a good one, need more like it) B+

 

Not Fun:

 

  • Player-Player interactivity (positive AND negative) F   Critical issue.  This is why the game is dying.
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3 hours ago, Seawing said:

 if there was just more social gameplay possible.

That's funny I'm the total opposite here.

 

I think DU would be a hit if it had a 'solo, offline,standalone' version with a eventually a local server for small co-op. Integrate with Steam Workshop to allow players to share BP and lua and you have a clear winner that could bring cash to develop the mmo.

 

The MMO choice was (sorry 'is' !) too ambitious and cost too much in term of hosting to allow a free large scale public beta (not sure AWS was a wise choice but I'm biased here). And I'm not sure there are enough potential players for this kind of mmo...

Also technically the game is an mmo but with a too heavy client. Too much is done 'client side' to lower the backend opex but this lead to limitations, cheating issues, and imho very difficult tomorrows. 

For instance, I really really wonder how they will fix the 'alf-f4 , ship completely stopped'. 

 

Well time will tell but I'm very worried. Strike a deal with Stadia may be ?

 

Last point:  NQ should really try to use the community to develop parts of the game: open up the file datamining (at least recipe/talents json files, the current locked .ung files is just ridiculous ), add an API/XHR to the client (within lua as a webrequest method+event or make Dual.Exe as a local REST server) , make the whole game UI modifiable (like WoW) and you will see the community will help you code. This will save you dev resources to focus on backend stuff.

 

Edited by Kirth Gersen
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5 hours ago, Rommel said:

the auction bots senseless!!!!

Yes, the bot buy orders are indeed WTF level.

A better title would be "Artificially high buy orders created by bots are causing the price of T1 ores to remain ludicrously high and preventing the market from naturally stabilizing". 

 

Due to the nature of the pure ore refining, product refining, and honeycomb refining skills and the way they multiply together, with all relevant skills at max (which at this time since 'beta' launch is quite possible with a different character for each step), steel honeycomb bot buy orders remain profitable to manufacture for selling to, even with hematite and coal prices rising to ~35 quanta per liter. It's utterly insane.

 

NQ, when are you going to change bot order prices to sensibly scale to a rolling 7 day or 14 day average of player orders? My understanding was that they were to provide a last ditch way of making money or obtaining items, not to serve as the backbone of the entire damn T1 economy...

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There is so much that dont work.

Even simple things like crashing while loading.

Boring mining but people who are really good in industry are millionaers and dont know what to do with the money

Unable to remove fuel from tanks

The Flight system is the most terrible i have ever seen. i use microsoft flight simulator since years, here i am crashing and landing everytime because its not like it should be, whats wrong i dont know but as it is the same with bought ships from you it can be only a problem with your physic engine

 

that all as result i will now today go offline and look back maybe in 1-2 years i dont want to spend anymore time.

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Lot of points here, i can subscribe most.
I do not know when I will leave, because I still have hope, but whenever I look in my tiny contactlist I mostly see 90% offline,
so, I have the proof that the critical leaving mass is reached. Our org doesn't communicate anymore because no one really knows 

what to plan, and why.... 
The rest of us is starting to build Warp Beacons, but, really, why should we have these ?
Selling Territory scanner works, strangely, so there must be still coming new players into the game that work themselves up to afford

them.

 

And listening to J.C. over and over again telling us how amazing everything is, sounds like a joke, we will never have millions of potential players.

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I don't think there is anything unexpected happening with quits. Most people are short-sighted and impatient, so that combined with a slow development of an MMO in beta is not going to retain a lot of players for very long. There is still a long way to go with gameplay features. I imagine with each major feature update some players will come back, and eventually there will be more complete game loops.

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2 hours ago, Haunty said:

I don't think there is anything unexpected happening with quits. Most people are short-sighted and impatient,

You dont know me, you dont know what i do and i simply think you have absolutly no right to call me short-sighted and impatient.

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10 hours ago, Kirth Gersen said:

 

That's funny I'm the total opposite here.

 

I think DU would be a hit if it had a 'solo, offline,standalone' version with a eventually a local server for small co-op. Integrate with Steam Workshop to allow players to share BP and lua and you have a clear winner that could bring cash to develop the mmo.

 

 

 

Unlikely, there are already solo games that do offline standalone better, the biggest thing going for dual universe is the single shard and needing to work on a single shard comes with many compromises, other games do better ship building and physics and have better single player content DU would not be competitive with them.

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I pretty much quit the game right now, although i really had fun during the first 1-3 weeks.

 

The most important reason for me is probably because I am in a minority and it is a problem which NQ should probably not focus on right now and I totally understand that.

But my main OS is Linux. Playing DU requires me to boot into another OS which I only set up to play DU. That is a huge overhead to login at all.

However I know that there are more important tasks for NQ to do right now.

 

But the other reason why I stopped playing the game is that none of the "professions" currently in the game were interesting or fun for me:

  • Mining: That is basically the entry point of the game because at first that is the only way to make money. It could be worse but not something I want to do all day long
  • Industry: I like it but I really had a hard time to understand why I am producing stuff if nothing ever is destroyed.
  • Hauling/Trading: Remote buy was not working when I was playing so you actually had to travel somewhere to buy stuff. And then the order is gone...
    And since basically everything is available everywhere and can be produced everywhere there is no real need for hauling. At least the price margin was too narrow to use warp cells when I was playing. And flying straight to a destination for 2 hours is not that much fun.
  • Building: I don't really care about that other than bulding a ship that can fly some cargo.
  • PvP: The entry point is quite high there because there are no NPCs where you can test your ship how it performs. And I could not find another reason for PvP other than "just doing PvP" or salvaging haulers so I skipped that completely.
  • Orgs: Never tries that to be honest. I am already involved in something like a Corp in another game and I also had a problem to understand what they are good for in this game. I understand that they are really nice if you are a builder. But there are other games where being in a "Corp" makes much more sense than in DU.
  • Other stuff where people are building race-tracks or something like that: There are other games where the main focus is racing. I prefer those instead of DU.
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