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Leaving the game for a good while (Read this before buying)


Nightranger

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Thought I would write this up before I leave, If anything for NQ to take as feedback/criticism.

The game is nothing like it was advertised, or made out to be, Which ultimately after 3 months, still is nothing near it, as such I feel really really played by NQ here. Was promised a blank canvas instead, Hundreds of Industry parts were injected into the game, was promised a player made economy, Instead Bots were put out and 100k quanta daily given out....

Played through the server downs, and the server ups, But all this game is, Is a mining simulator, and for those who stick it out, then yes you can build something for an hour, before you go back to mining. There is NO value in anything you build here, and most fixes end up breaking something else...

I'm leaving out of pure boredom, I had high hopes for the game, based off the good advertising given, NQ released a broken Alpha, and made out it was a beta, and it still isn't even worthy to be deemed a "Beta release" at this point. Things are still broken, RDMS is like a win 95 firewall system, that's over-complicated with not enough organisation logging. The skill tree is pretty much just a basic form ripped off EvE with no real optimisation to any of it, and no real value in it, until you hit level 4 in a tree, but no real motivation to go to lvl 5...

There is no ai missions to do, to fill the gaps when standing around twiddling your thumbs waiting for parts to refine/produce. The graphic options are really really lacking, like not at all what you would expect from a Beta release, the options your allowed to tweak are more what you would expect within the first couple patches of Alpha, That being said, the general graphics are run server side... Which is awful for client optimizations. There was no difference in FPS between having an 12 core/24 thread cpu, and a quad core/ 8 thread cpu which confirms the optimizations are done server side, rather than client side. Although good in one aspect, this has been proven time and time again to cause more issues through out the gaming world. All the worlds are barren, apart from Alioth/Sanctuary and Teoma, The rest are just Ball objects given very little colour, with hardly any textures on it.

The way NQ have handled some players also was a HUGE turn off for me, Like Ban people for desecrating a marketplace in a sandbox environment, due to their own RDMS mistake, but haven't banned known exploiters/griefers - That to me tells me the integrity of a company, and as of this current point, unless there is some real changes done, I wouldn't pay the subscription cost, and had I known all this beforehand, I wouldn't have pledged...

The PvP is also just an AFK simulator, You sit in a seat, staring at a pop up modal with two or three buttons to click... There is no excitement, no challenge, no skill involved in this, The overall UI and UX, sucks badly with literally no changes done to any of this in three months (Not even a small tiny bit), there are still game breaking bugs, yet NQ think it's great to not even add half of these onto their "Known bugs" list. They force the game to run/play in admin mode, which is a serious security issue and isn't needed... and while some of this is still rampant, they release an update adding emotes into the game...

The LUA coding has no documentation behind it, no API and is heavily restrictive, yes you can log the space in a container, but if you want to log what's in the container, you have to have 1 item per container, which overall causes more code to be run putting more strain on things... (To name one of the things)...

I personally feel at this stage NQ have got their priorities wrong, and have taken a lot of people for their money through over-hyping and false advertising, You can't even call this a game at this point in time, it is still very much Alpha. The overall playerbase has dropped significantly from Beta launch, and primarillyt because of things outlined above, some of which still have not been sorted.

With all this in mind, I have had an overall "Pleasant" experience, although as time has gone on, and not a lot being said, other than asking people for feedback, I won't be returning back to this game for a long time, it is currently a 50% mining sim, 40% waiting around sim and 9% of actually doing something, with 1% allowance for whatever... 

I still hope NQ deliver on what they promise, but If I don't return before the beta key runs out, I will heavily consider whether or not to subscribe to this game and give even more money to support this, My overall opinion, Is that NQ are trying to make a platform to sell on to other developers, rather than actually making a game for their customers, and this shows in the serious lack in attention to detail particularly around the UI/UX...

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11 minutes ago, Nightranger said:

The game is nothing like it was advertised, or made out to be, Which ultimately after 3 months, still is nothing near it, as such I feel really really played by NQ here. Was promised a blank canvas instead, Hundreds of Industry parts were injected into the game, was promised a player made economy, Instead Bots were put out and 100k quanta daily given out....

Yep. The nonsense I describe in this post is still going on nearly 2 months later, injecting quanta into the economy without purpose or end. Bot orders should scale to a weekly average of player orders, not be a static price floor/ceiling... Bot buy orders for steel honeycombs are still at ~360q apiece, driving hematite prices to 34q/l and the other t1s to 24q/l+ thanks to the t1 component bot buy orders.

 

11 minutes ago, Nightranger said:

The way NQ have handled some players also was a HUGE turn off for me, Like Ban people for desecrating a marketplace in a sandbox environment, due to their own RDMS mistake, but haven't banned known exploiters/griefers

They said it was to save face. They only shamed themselves with their reaction.

 

11 minutes ago, Nightranger said:

There is no ai missions to do, to fill the gaps when standing around twiddling your thumbs waiting for parts to refine/produce.

QFT. I'd try my hand at building ships but the building system is still woefully inadequate. I'm not spending dozens of hours learning 'voxelmancy' when a decent editor or even importing models from Blender would be lightyears better.

 

11 minutes ago, Nightranger said:

Played through the server downs, and the server ups, But all this game is, Is a mining simulator, and for those who stick it out, then yes you can build something for an hour, before you go back to mining.

The game sorely needs ship based mining solutions. Sitting and staring at a meganode auto mining / clicking every 2s for hours on end is not good gameplay and was starting to cause Repetitive Stress Injuries before I quit.

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I think a lot of people are looking for Dual Universe to be a lot of different things, and i hope it can be all those things eventually.  But it's not all of them yet.

 

Personally what i was looking for was a building game, Minecraft with better graphics.  Right now Dual Universe is exactly that, and better then i ever could ever have imagined.

 

Look at how popular Minecraft is, it's a crazy successful game.

 

Having watched this project go from a few pieces of concept art, and a discussion forum, to what it is now.  From where i'm sitting things are looking pretty damn good.  I really hope to see the game become everything that they envisioned it to be.  And it's possible that NQ was a bit too ambitious.  But i don't see any evidence that the game isn't on track to be something amazing.  

 

As far as i can see, NQ is making the game as fast as they can, it sucks if the game sounded interesting to you, but nothing in it interests you right now.  But what was NQ supposed to do differently?  

 

Should they have built the game from start to finish in secret, without telling anyone about it, just so people wouldn't have to live with the disappointment of knowing about it, but not being able to play all of it yet?

 

They could have settled for just making Minecraft with better graphics.  Or they could have made Eve with better graphics.  Either of those would have been a hell of a lot easier.

 

But neither of those would have been half as good as what we have right now, to me at least.  /shrug

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

Personally what i was looking for was a building game, Minecraft with better graphics.  Right now Dual Universe is exactly that, and better then i ever could ever have imagined.

I am not a software specialist, so feel free to correct the technicalities (if I did got them wrong): Minecraft is a voxel-based game but the vertices cannot move (unless you edit the source-code itself). Minecraft offers limited geometry of only a cube that snaps perfectly with each other, and variety of textures. This is the game without modding it. And then you have Boundless Online, it offers the same thing that Minecraft offers but more option for static shapes. These games have what you call "static vertices" (vertices that do not move). Excuse my vocabulary, alright, I am not a software specialist. 

 

And then you have Dual Universe, it offers the same thing these games offer in a single-shard environment, but with limitations such as core-bound, and it does offer dynamic vertices (editable/movable vertices), hence it is more "extensive" (as what the Building Trailer is trying to project). But what is the method of moving these vertices? Yes, it is just like the experimental Landmark (where they actually got the idea from), you have to voxelmance because there is no tool thus there is no other way. Sure, it is more extensive in the sense that it is capable of producing extensive results but it is not accessible! 

 

You love to voxelmance? You love to build your own voxel libraries from voxelmancing just to get started in building? You love how complicated and time-extensive the building editor is because there is lack of intuitive and productive tools? I do not, and the majority do not! Only few minorities are capable of producing decent-looking constructs in this game because the extensiveness of the editor is not accessible to many! 

 

I am the same as you: what I was looking for was a building game with better graphics in an MMO scale. This is not it! This editor is unproductive, too complicated, too buggy even. I just don't see myself putting up with this editor. If I need a building game (one that I will build my gallery on permanently), I need a building game that has a better editor. Dual Universe's building editor is just inaccessible to many, including myself -- it is both difficult and too time-consuming! It is an editor that is too hard to use and too hard to produce with! 

 

Maybe you love this kind of thing, I do not! I prefer to type my resume on a word editor, you people love to carve it on stone! I don't understand the people who find this editor good, I just do not! 

 

Look what people have built in Minecraft and look what people are able to build in this game and tell me which is more capable? Minecraft is not core-bound man, while people struggle with the editor of this game! call it more extensive, is it even accessible? Not many people can build in this game no matter how creative they are, it's the truth!

 

You saying this game's building is more capable than Minecraft's? How about you google image and you tell me? We have limitations in this game and the extensiveness of being able to move the vertices is not doing me anything! It is not doing me anything if I cannot access it without putting ridiculous amount of time and going through the complicated process.

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@Eternal So Dual Universe is superior to Minecraft in every way.  But because it's not as superior as it could be, it's unacceptable to you?

 

You're talking about shortcomings as if they are permanent.

 

If you want to see what i hope the voxel tools in DU will be eventually, look up "Voxelfarm" on youtube.  It's the voxel engine they used to make Landmark.  (NQ built their own voxel engine from scratch) The version of Voxelfarm used in Landmark had tools that were about the same as we have now in DU.  But the latest version of Voxelfarm is amazing.  Lightyears ahead of what it was in Landmark, and what we have in DU.

 

There is absolutely no reason why we can't have those same features in Dual Universe.

 

But we'll get them when we get them.

 

It's still better then huge cubes.

 

 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Nightranger said:


The way NQ have handled some players also was a HUGE turn off for me, Like Ban people for desecrating a marketplace in a sandbox environment, due to their own RDMS mistake, but haven't banned known exploiters/griefers - That to me tells me the integrity of a company, and as of this current point, unless there is some real changes done, I wouldn't pay the subscription cost, and had I known all this beforehand, I wouldn't have pledged...
 

 

This cant be emphasized enough. A community will put up will all kinds of troubles and delays if they like the devs.  The community managers here seem nice enough but what we have gotten from the devs themselves has ranged from indifferent to nasty.   Should DU fail, I will keep a wary eye out for any further projects from these people. 

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I am pretty new here, only a couple of weeks playing. But seriously anyone can say that the voxel tech here is hard to use? It is as simple as a couple of mouse clicks to produce something far more beautiful than minecraft or any other voxel builder can offer.

 

I can build a ship that looks stunning with curves and smooth edges in 30 mins and that is just using the standard tools, I am not a voxelmancer. Hell, they made it so easy you can literally just smash a load of solid cubes in a rough pattern all over your construct and then uses the smoothing tools to make it beautiful in seconds. It is really not that complicated.

 

There are definitely a load of things I would like to see improved in the game, like voxel rendering distance and the ability to distribute the core's dimensions in a shape you prefer (why have a build area 500ft tall when you want to make a 1000ft long tunnel but are now forced to use two cores and waste all the high space?)

 

I would also like the ability to pre-load some hex sectors so when I am flying through my territory I don't have to see all my work jumping into view with sub par LOD system.

 

The terrain textures need a massive update and the skills tree is kind of insane time scale for marginal improvements.

 

But the voxel tech is really very good.

 

 

/shrug

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Just now, Nightranger said:


The game is nothing like it was advertised, or made out to be, Which ultimately after 3 months, still is nothing near it, as such I feel really really played by NQ here. Was promised a blank canvas instead, Hundreds of Industry parts were injected into the game, was promised a player made economy, Instead Bots were put out and 100k quanta daily given out....

 

What do you think would happen to the economy if they had no bots and 100k daily? You can't sell anything if no one has money to buy anything, and despite all the money injection we saw constant deflation as the only thing setting a floor on price falls are the bots. 

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It is what it is and the player numbers say it all. There is no point in glossing over or speaking badly. The new players decide whether they will continue to support the development. All beta key players just have to hope that enough money comes in to change something.

 

I have made up my mind.

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6 minutes ago, Avonthorn said:

How do you know what the "player numbers" are? Is there an output from NQ showing 24 graph of concurrent users logged on? Is there a site showing current paid subs?

Discord activity, reboot queues, private org channels, Streamer activity, YouTube watch numbers, and if news sites are deciding to keep running DU articles for traffic.

 

YouTube/Streamer watch numbers are pretty accurate for this game, since it’s the only place the devs bother to release news.  So if no one cares about update news, no one is playing.  Also has numbers that can’t be games in any way by the devs.

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20 hours ago, Nightranger said:

Thought I would write this up before I leave, If anything for NQ to take as feedback/criticism.

The game is nothing like it was advertised, or made out to be, Which ultimately after 3 months, still is nothing near it, as such I feel really really played by NQ here. Was promised a blank canvas instead, Hundreds of Industry parts were injected into the game, was promised a player made economy, Instead Bots were put out and 100k quanta daily given out....

....

I still hope NQ deliver on what they promise, but If I don't return before the beta key runs out, I will heavily consider whether or not to subscribe to this game and give even more money to support this, My overall opinion, Is that NQ are trying to make a platform to sell on to other developers, rather than actually making a game for their customers, and this shows in the serious lack in attention to detail particularly around the UI/UX...

Whilst i 100% respect your opinion here and will agree that these are issues I have heard from players that have left my own organisation.  I would disagree completely about there not being a game here.  It just seems it is a game that is not that easy to find gameplay paths and those paths only appeals to some people.  Some people seems to have no issue finding a niche which suits them, some people find it easy not to have to mine, some people seem to struggle to find the time to do everything they want, whilst others struggle to find anything to do. 

Why is this?

First up, people are different and enjoy different things, i am very lucky, I not only enjoy game like satisfactory but also the market trading / empire building side of game, so there is loads to do.   I love open sandboxes and dont really want or need NPCs, but then a lot of my friends are different.  I sincerely hope the game will cater for them in the future.

Secondly, a lot of the gameplay loops are currently either hard to discover or are outside the game, trading for example and prospecting, the game does make these things clear and to really engage in them you have to step outside the game.  Hopefully this will change once the mission system in launched, whenever the might be.

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Many people say that bot orders are bad/break economy etc.

It takes VERY little dev effort to just change the numbers so they buy-price goes down by a factor of 2 and makes it irrelevant.

 

NQ: Let's add emotes ! The ":-)" is not suitable for 2020 beta !

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30 minutes ago, XKentX said:

Many people say that bot orders are bad/break economy etc.

It takes VERY little dev effort to just change the numbers so they buy-price goes down by a factor of 2 and makes it irrelevant.

 

NQ: Let's add emotes ! The ":-)" is not suitable for 2020 beta !

What the bots orders are doing for the eco, only NQ knows, but I do 100% agree they do not help gameplay, as too many people are pouring ores down low margin bot orders, when they could sell to players for big margins.

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You had a chance to test the game in Beta before release. The game is not like it was advertised because it just got out from Alpha. You should come back in 1 year and check out what advanced tech it will be. While i agree and i understand everyones pov i just cant understand why people compares alpha with beta and with release? I mean, you guys talk like this is NMS 2 ? wtf?

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1 hour ago, Moosegun said:

as too many people are pouring ores down low margin bot orders, when they could sell to players for big margins.

Bot orders are guaranteed instant sales, and create money from nothing. Selling to players can be risky, and redistributes wealth.

 

I am not arguing for or against either, but bot orders are very appealing. Steel voxels, anyone?

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17 minutes ago, Emptiness said:

Bot orders are guaranteed instant sales, and create money from nothing. Selling to players can be risky, and redistributes wealth.

 

I am not arguing for or against either, but bot orders are very appealing. Steel voxels, anyone?

Yeah but the difference is that you are selling your ore at just above cost, whilst I am selling my elements to players at just below bot SELL price, which is XXX% higher margin. 

So I can sell at L Atmos for 450k, when the bots buy them for 115k.

Yes it takes some time but it is ZERO risk to sell elements (I have sold pretty much every type of item), you just need to spread your wares.  This is my point though, NQ should just remove your easy option and inform you of the other option - which is to actually trade with players.

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16 hours ago, Anomaly said:

 

This cant be emphasized enough. A community will put up will all kinds of troubles and delays if they like the devs.  The community managers here seem nice enough but what we have gotten from the devs themselves has ranged from indifferent to nasty.   Should DU fail, I will keep a wary eye out for any further projects from these people. 

TBH, I have seen far more 'nasty' from you than anything NQ have posted but you probably dont hold yourself to the same account........

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20 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

NQ should just remove your easy option

The better solution is to make bot orders be what I had originally thought they were, a last resort, and make them scale based on a moving average of player orders. If no player orders for a t1 item for a week, the bot prices for that item reset to original prices. Otherwise, they keep dropping until an equilibrium is reached.

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1 minute ago, Emptiness said:

The better solution is to make bot orders be what I had originally thought they were, a last resort, and make them scale based on a moving average of player orders.

They are currently the 'last resort' they are literally only slightly (very slightly) better than just selling your ore for market price. But people still use them, because people are lazy, whereas I make as much money, selling 1/4 of the ore.

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17 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

They are currently the 'last resort' they are literally only slightly (very slightly) better than just selling your ore for market price.

That is confusing cause and effect. Ore prices are so high BECAUSE of the bot prices causing ore prices to slowly increase to the maximum profitable, not the other way around.

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3 minutes ago, Emptiness said:

That is confusing cause and effect. Ore prices are so high BECAUSE of the bot prices slowly driving ore prices up, not the other way around.

Nothing to do with ore prices.  The bot BUY price is literally designed to be very low, just above basic ore cost price.  So if you sell to bots, you are making only slightly more money than selling the ore.  Instead, if you choose to sell to players, and sell a product with no player competition, you can list it for just under bot SELL price, which is around a 400% markup.  So basically you are making four times the money from the same ore......... 

Hoping this penny might drop in a minute. 

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2 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

Nothing to do with ore prices.  The bot BUY price is literally designed to be very low, just above basic ore cost price.  So if you sell to bots, you are making only slightly more money than selling the ore.  Instead, if you choose to sell to players, and sell a product with no player competition, you can list it for just under bot SELL price, which is around a 400% markup.  So basically you are making four times the money from the same ore......... 

Uh, no? Did you forget about this thread I created? You even posted in it. 

Bot prices have never changed, and by never changing them, NQ is forcing T1 ore prices (and the prices of everything else) to rise to a certain level.

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3 minutes ago, Emptiness said:

Uh, no? Did you forget about this thread I created? You even posted in it. 

Bot prices have never changed, and by never changing them, NQ is forcing T1 ore prices (and the prices of everything else) to rise to a certain level.

My point is that the profit you outline in that thread, could have been four times more, if you had used that ore and sold products to players.  As I said, pretty hopefully buy bots will be gone form the game soon, and we can have a proper player built eco..... rather than the spammy bullshit which is throwing ore down the drain.

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