[Discuss] We've Heard You!

[Bobbie]

.

[GraXXoR]

39 minutes ago, Bobbie said:

And an AGG L as chandelier  

And build it all on a 256m core...

[Warlander]

If JC were awesome at playing the markets he would thus be rich and would not need investors or likely working here. But, JC seems to think its their responsibility to run these markets into the ground so people make a little more money. JC is way too impatient to let the market(s) sort themselves out. JC has to go and buy up all the ore he can from the markets to create artificial inflation and on top of the schematics which were only sold in limited quantities to keep us from being able to make items and allow his buy/sell bot friends to hijack a system mechanic and sell them for triple the price. Thanks A-Hole.

 

I remember watching my friend livestream this game and talking about how all the markets were de-centralized which was one of the many reasons I started playing. But after I joined its anthing but de-centralized markets when they centralize all the 14 district markets and teleporters between them essentially creating unlimited amounts of items being sold at those markets and naturally causing people to underbid others to make a buck. If NQ would just stop messing with the markets and allow players to run their own and get rid of all their own markets and use containers as the inventory limit and how many containers you can pack into the static core there would be limited items up on the market in general and it would naturally cause prices to go up.

 

These ham fisted short sighted approaches to destroying the markets come on top of:

• people quitting the game faster than they can be replaced by new players
• Broken 1 sided PvP with no defense mechanics to keep PvPers from stealing ships and dumping the ore/items into the markets at cut rate prices
• People hijacking ships using AGG and stealing your ship and again dumping the ore/items on the market
• Buy/Sell bots playing the market and manipulating the market
• Finite Resources which will naturally become scarce
• Schematics which will naturally bottleneck the items coming into the markets
• Having to now replace broken cores when you crash
• Destructive Elements requiring multiple backup copies of your ship if you have a bad week

The thing is JC is far too impatient to wait for all those factors and more to kick in before he just goes and buys out all the ore while bottlenecking our ability to craft via schematics right before we get destructive elements which will certainly cause mass inflation that is already boxing out smaller players and will continue as always to only benefit the large orgs and punish everyone else until they join or quit. Solid plan...

 

Rather than just developing things that work they always go the roundabout way of breaking stuff and then putting a bandaid on it they just need to start actually adressing the issues and more so the real issues plauging this game.

 

After all this was supposed to be called Dual Univers, not Single Solar System...

 

 

[Shulace]

A lot of good points, theories and remedies posted in here but I am afraid it may be too late, its already a ghost universe in game.

 

One thing NQ will learn from this is that in the live service markets; when your customers leave because there is little to no content after they spent hours building up their assets, they are likely to come back after a while when new content eventually gets added. They were set up nice too because people did not mind letting their talents train whilst they played other games in the meanwhile, they had a fun experience playing the game at the least.

 

With this approach they effectively nuked those players. Unhappy players will unsub/refund and move on, never to return because they have been done dirty,  its too late for NQ to act all pikachu face over this. All the feedback that was given beforehand said this would have happened but they pushed through anyways.

[Bobbie]

.

[michaelk]

Long term, removing bots would cause prices to fall, right? 

 

Bots are one of two ways currency gets injected into the game. Without bots, the only way to "print" money is through the daily login bonus.

 

Less currency supply means deflation -- each unit of currency is worth more because there's less of it to go around. 

 

The fact that the game doesn't have a way to print money other than daily login and bots...it's another one of those core design issues that should have been thought about a long time ago. 

 

There's a reason MMOs have NPCs and NPC drops...beyond injecting fresh money into the currency supply, it also makes for many easy gameplay loops.

 

They want everything to be "run by players"? Fine...but they do still need an actual plan which they haven't bothered to make after this many years. Not for the economy. Not for gameplay loops. Not even for basic player interactions like PvP....and that's NQ's core issue.

 

They don't want to plan. They want to be "different", but don't want to think too hard about what those differences actually mean for the game's design and gameplay. 

[Skjalden]

Will the element damage count be restored again to new, when it will be changed to just be damaged in PVP?

[Kirth Gersen]

So if in the 'vision' for this game , industry is for only 10% of the player base why so much effort and development resources go into industry ?

Why industry wasn't introduced later once 90% of the rest of the game is done and stable ?

 

You could have started by having all bots sell all possible elements and focus on everything but industry... but you didn't.

 

I don't get the logic from a game studio management point of view. care to explain NQ ?

[Elitez]

3 hours ago, Warlander said:

If JC were awesome at playing the markets he would thus be rich and would not need investors or likely working here. But, JC seems to think its their responsibility to run these markets into the ground so people make a little more money. JC is way too impatient to let the market(s) sort themselves out. JC has to go and buy up all the ore he can from the markets to create artificial inflation and on top of the schematics which were only sold in limited quantities to keep us from being able to make items and allow his buy/sell bot friends to hijack a system mechanic and sell them for triple the price. Thanks A-Hole.

 

I remember watching my friend livestream this game and talking about how all the markets were de-centralized which was one of the many reasons I started playing. But after I joined its anthing but de-centralized markets when they centralize all the 14 district markets and teleporters between them essentially creating unlimited amounts of items being sold at those markets and naturally causing people to underbid others to make a buck. If NQ would just stop messing with the markets and allow players to run their own and get rid of all their own markets and use containers as the inventory limit and how many containers you can pack into the static core there would be limited items up on the market in general and it would naturally cause prices to go up.

 

These ham fisted short sighted approaches to destroying the markets come on top of:

• people quitting the game faster than they can be replaced by new players
• Broken 1 sided PvP with no defense mechanics to keep PvPers from stealing ships and dumping the ore/items into the markets at cut rate prices
• People hijacking ships using AGG and stealing your ship and again dumping the ore/items on the market
• Buy/Sell bots playing the market and manipulating the market
• Finite Resources which will naturally become scarce
• Schematics which will naturally bottleneck the items coming into the markets
• Having to now replace broken cores when you crash
• Destructive Elements requiring multiple backup copies of your ship if you have a bad week

The thing is JC is far too impatient to wait for all those factors and more to kick in before he just goes and buys out all the ore while bottlenecking our ability to craft via schematics right before we get destructive elements which will certainly cause mass inflation that is already boxing out smaller players and will continue as always to only benefit the large orgs and punish everyone else until they join or quit. Solid plan...

 

Rather than just developing things that work they always go the roundabout way of breaking stuff and then putting a bandaid on it they just need to start actually adressing the issues and more so the real issues plauging this game.

 

After all this was supposed to be called Dual Univers, not Single Solar System...

 

 

1: You are talking about a finished game. We're playing Stage 1 of Beta. Things you are talking will be at release.
2: De-centralized market = player driven economy. You can setup the price.
3: Finite resources? Can you show me how you did the math?
4: People complaining about permanent damage? Come on man, dont fly a ship you cant afford to lose. This is Eve stuff.

I cant continue, this is Stage 1 of Beta, the easiest and the most primitive version of DU and you cant adapt to it ?!?!

[StaticAstraeus]

1 hour ago, Kirth Gersen said:

So if in the 'vision' for this game , industry is for only 10% of the player base why so much effort and development resources go into industry ?

Why industry wasn't introduced later once 90% of the rest of the game is done and stable ?

 

You could have started by having all bots sell all possible elements and focus on everything but industry... but you didn't.

 

I don't get the logic from a game studio management point of view. care to explain NQ ?

Best get yourself a comfortable seat... you'll get tired if you wait for an answer to that while standing up. 

 

The "vision" for this entire game is actually unachievable, no matter what tricks the developers try. This is due to the underlying premise being fundamentally flawed.

They want an "online civilisation" where people interact to form communities/corporations and grow? Fair dues, commendable even. 

Slight problem: there are no survival mechanics (the suit provides for everything) and nothing you build contributes to the universe in any real way. 

You can make bases and buildings that enable production, all other uses are purely cosmetic and inconsequential. (I've seen some really nice buildings, but in the end they are just museum pieces; they serve no purpose). You can (could?) also make ships to travel around, but that's it.

All that's left is mining, to feed the machine, but even then resources don't respawn, so unless you chance upon a rare area that has not been mined out by someone that drilled down vertically and then suicided out, all you have to look forward to as a new player is disappointment. 

 

So, the question is: how do you build an "online civilisation" - without survival mechanics - when you are dealing with limited resources in a hand full of planets/moons, have virtually no ability to be anything other than a menial worker for some big corp, have no real exploration to engage in (aside from said planets/moons), have a poorly implemented market system that would be hard to maintain if the community had the required communication tools to do so, and - to top it all off - nothing you make has value to anyone but yourself?

 

The answer is, you don't. 

 

It's may sound harsh, but the vision is flawed.

It was still fun to play though  

[Raker1]

2 minutes ago, Elitez said:

1: You are talking about a finished game. We're playing Stage 1 of Beta. Things you are talking will be at release.
2: De-centralized market = player driven economy. You can setup the price.
3: Finite resources? Can you show me how you did the math?
4: People complaining about permanent damage? Come on man, dont fly a ship you cant afford to lose. This is Eve stuff.

I cant continue, this is Stage 1 of Beta, the easiest and the most primitive version of DU and you cant adapt to it ?!?!

In Eve you can buy ship insurance, you can’t in this game 

[Elitez]

7 minutes ago, Raker1 said:

In Eve you can buy ship insurance, you can’t in this game 

Double the resources for your ship, save bp, put it base in container > insurance"

You already have it, you want QoL type of item so you dont have to sink time in the game. Meh. Thats meh. We dont do that here.

[Candyman]

16 hours ago, michaelk said:

You can see the investor profile here: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dual-universe/company_financials 

 

 

Thats keeps the eyes wide shut open.

I see 6 Person, highly intelligent, well edjucatet etc. But what I am missing: Chief of Gamedesign, Chief of economics, Social scientist for human interaction and so on. But OK, I don't look behind the wall.

 

In my opinien there a 3 things that have do be emmidiatly changed:

1. That a single person can scan up to 120 tiles per hour is redicules(see Reddit). A well orgenaized Corp can scan a moon or planet in a couple of days and know where the juice tiles are. So only 1 scanner per account.
2. Its also redicules that a single person can catch up to 40 tiles. Well organized Corp - 500 members - all juice tiles gone. So also, lets say 3 tiles per account. Maybe 1 tile extra for a corp with a static L core to build a HQ. No more bonus . The benefiz comes from the interaction with the members!
3. The Ore that sold to the bots should be respawn in abandoned mined( >70%) tiles, so other player have a chance to fetch a good tile.

You never will get ridd of the unbalance betwen the big orgs and the rest of the players, but with these 3 changes they have a better chance to keep up.

 

There are many more things that have to be changed or established like Market-UI, a good personal-massaging system or a advertisingboard.

I don't mind to pay 6 bucks a month even if the game is in pre-Alpha, but if the next update is the same crap I am out.

 

Keep healthy

[Warlander]

50 minutes ago, Elitez said:

1: You are talking about a finished game. We're playing Stage 1 of Beta. Things you are talking will be at release.
2: De-centralized market = player driven economy. You can setup the price.
3: Finite resources? Can you show me how you did the math?
4: People complaining about permanent damage? Come on man, dont fly a ship you cant afford to lose. This is Eve stuff.

I cant continue, this is Stage 1 of Beta, the easiest and the most primitive version of DU and you cant adapt to it ?!?!

1: I know its a beta and not a finished game or anything resembling a full game loop. If they are talking about it now then its being developed now and worth talking about it since NQ does not think things through until it blows up in their face. Bad design is still bad design no matter what stage in development. Alpha is the time for making systems beta is the time to test them for last min polishing, optimization, and stress testing. Yet, here we are in alpha, I mean beta or perpetual development.

 

2: No, NQ has essentially centralized the market into 14 district hubs with teleporters to each of them, and since the district market pads are really the only reliable way to sell at any frequency because that is where everyone goes to sell quick and undercut people if they arent patient I would say that is the definition of centralized markets. Unless you are talking about all the mini markets and to that I say why are they even there? We should have been the ones to colonize and build markets outside of Alioth to actually create a de-centralized system.

 

3: Ever watch a node regenerate or drop new nodes in? No? Well then if they dont that means what we have is finite unless they start making renewable resources. Considering that once all the ore is gone thats it until they release a new solar system. And seeing as they are taking all the ore out of the game as they can it speeds that process up since everyone and their mother is mining their ass off right now. If you know how to regen nodes let me know...

 

4: This isnt real PvP, as there is no shields, chaff, destruct sequence or anything other then one sided battles based on who locks first. Considering all the people we started this game going full pvp/pilot bailed because the PvP is so broken, lopsided, and broken they got bored and bailed for better PvP games. Considering Pvp by far has the quickest Talent research for completely bypassing mining and crafting with litterally no downside but pure profit for no investment, this aint PvP. They just have it to cater to those who like to grief and gank sitting in lanes stealing everything that comes their way since they know the lanes.

 

It aint my fault NQ wont let me do multiple things in this game or consistently tries to box me and whats left of my cew into a corner with every patch. We just have 2 miners and an industry guy left. So building a ship for 120+ million to lose it in 3 mins without any form of defense is not my fault. Its just bad game design with systems that make building another ship longer and harder to produce as time goes on since now we need schematics before we can even use all the ore we are sitting on, not to mention we now have to make a line of machines for each part so we dont burn millions changing things up.

 

I am no stranger to PvP and I accept that losses will happen but the ratio of time/effort/risk/reward is way off base when getting ore is taking longer and longer to find anythings. There is still a lot left to mine im sure, but finding those payoffs is really starting to take a lot more time and effort then its worth. Hell we spent about 5 weeks mining, jumped two moons and two planets which were basically all strip mined and managed to fill 5 boxes with anything T3+ the whole time before we decided to cut losses and just mine T1 mats. We only had 10 boxes to fill and mind you we were going at it 10+hrs a day from tile to tile to tile as we walked our ore reserves up the tiers to make things.

 

Bad game design is bad game design no matter if its alpha/beta/live it changes nothing except for the rest of the systems they want to pile on which compound all the issues I listed that you quoted. If you dont see those as issue that cool but soon enough they will be. Don't know about you but I have played enough terrible games over the years to know a dud when I see one. This game does have a lot of promise, but it has a lot of issues, limitations, and fixes that need to be addressed sooner then later. But just know you dont need to be a white knight I seen far too many of your kind eat crow when game after game after game gets shut down with people defending said bad game design and telling me its a beta bro just give it time...

[Elitez]

@WarlanderI am talking about NQ's vision. You are talking about your needs or what you want to do now in beta. Conversation is not going anywhere.

[Warlander]

1 hour ago, Elitez said:

1: You are talking about a finished game. We're playing Stage 1 of Beta. Things you are talking will be at release.

14 minutes ago, Elitez said:

@WarlanderI am talking about NQ's vision. You are talking about your needs or what you want to do now in beta. Conversation is not going anywhere.

 

Rly now so which one is it? Are we talking about beta, finished games, or visions of grandeur?

 

Their acid trip visions are garbage anyhow. They can barely get anything to work or fully impliment anyything as it stands now the vision means nothing to me. I have never seen any studio that made it to launch follow their "vision" once the players rip it to shreds when the stuff they are actually developing isnt fully baked or fun or up to snuff.

[Elitez]

10 minutes ago, Warlander said:

Rly now so which one is it? Are we talking about beta, finished games, or visions of grandeur?

We're talking about a game thats currently in Stage 1 of Beta. This is the easiest DU you will ever play. Game is going harder, and harder and harder.... Let sink in for a bit, it wont become easier outside safe zone ever again. We allwant the finish product but its not coming anytime soon.

read 1st post and find a way to bring some theorycrafting to the table.
 

 

[Warlander]

7 minutes ago, Elitez said:

We're talking about a game thats currently in Stage 1 of Beta. This is the easiest DU you will ever play. Game is going harder, and harder and harder.... Let sink in for a bit, it wont become easier outside safe zone ever again. We allwant the finish product but its not coming anytime soon.

read 1st post and find a way to bring some theorycrafting to the table.
 

 

Here's a theory for you then.

 

1: Schematics box out new players from being self sufficient or being able to build without complete reliance on daily credits

2: Destructive Elements will further box out new players from building ships if they have to at the very least buy a new core every time they crash, engines every 3, and containers every 5. Considering the learning curve those pilots are done for unless they want to live on UBI forever and build a new ship every week lol.

3: Finite resources will become more and more scarce until it is not worth mining unless they drop multiple other connecting solar systems or large orgs are going to take over the T2 solar system and box people out.

4: Once there is no new players to PvP, miners to mine, or crafters to craft you wont be able to just build 20-100mil ships + inflation every time you need to replace all the destroyed elements and ganked/hyjacked ships.

5: Once the Large orgs and PvP guilds take over the new solar system they are going to keep all the mats, tehc, etc to them selves while blockading the jump gates / wormholes until they can then come back through and destroy everything that is left once enough people lost all their ships and means to fight.

7: The PvPers get bored and move on as their is nobody left to kill.

8: Couple of waves as the tide goes out and NQ shuts the game down because of their pay model after maybe 1.5years after launch.

 

Basically the same story as every other PvP game on the market with few exceptions lasting the span of time. And those games are not nearly as space limited or limited in what you can do, or how rediculous and punishing things are going to get on top of this ore hyper inflation event right as element destruction is trickled in. Its going to be a fun ride all the way to the ground as it will only really be fun for Large Orgs crapping on everyone else until they finish ruining the game for us all.

[Elitez]

8 minutes ago, Warlander said:

Here's a theory for you then.

 

1: Schematics box out new players from being self sufficient or being able to build without complete reliance on daily credits

2: Destructive Elements will further box out new players from building ships if they have to at the very least buy a new core every time they crash, engines every 3, and containers every 5. Considering the learning curve those pilots are done for unless they want to live on UBI forever and build a new ship every week lol.

3: Finite resources will become more and more scarce until it is not worth mining unless they drop multiple other connecting solar systems or large orgs are going to take over the T2 solar system and box people out.

4: Once there is no new players to PvP, miners to mine, or crafters to craft you wont be able to just build 20-100mil ships + inflation every time you need to replace all the destroyed elements and ganked/hyjacked ships.

5: Once the Large orgs and PvP guilds take over the new solar system they are going to keep all the mats, tehc, etc to them selves while blockading the jump gates / wormholes until they can then come back through and destroy everything that is left once enough people lost all their ships and means to fight.

7: The PvPers get bored and move on as their is nobody left to kill.

8: Couple of waves as the tide goes out and NQ shuts the game down because of their pay model after maybe 1.5years after launch.

 

Basically the same story as every other PvP game on the market with few exceptions lasting the span of time. And those games are not nearly as space limited or limited in what you can do, or how rediculous and punishing things are going to get on top of this ore hyper inflation event right as element destruction is trickled in. Its going to be a fun ride all the way to the ground as it will only really be fun for Large Orgs crapping on everyone else until they finish ruining the game for us all.

 

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire.

o7

[StaticAstraeus]

36 minutes ago, Elitez said:

 

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire.

o7

 

Actually, "Wishful thinking" is "the imagining or discussion of a very unlikely future event or situation as if it were possible and might one day happen" - Cambridge dictionary 
The problem here is that the described scenario is a tailored pragmatic overview of past events in other games. It may be a worst case scenario, but it is not unlikely at all.

There's little point in being afraid that it will come to pass, but to simply dismiss the possibility merely invites it to happen.

[Deintus]

22 hours ago, michaelk said:

You can see the investor profile here: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dual-universe/company_financials 

 

The most recent round of investment came in 2019 for ~$11 million USD. The total raised is about $22 million, but let's focus on that $11 million for now. 

 

Each account pays about between $6.99 and $5.83 a month for access (oh look they added a monthly sub, I thought it was a 3-month min...) 

 

They'd need 100,000 subs to make ~$11mm in revenue in ~15 months (assuming the most expensive monthly sub)...and right now, there's no way they have 100,000 subs.

 

Hell, retaining half that won't be easy IMHO. 

 

Now consider NQ's ~100 staff and considerable server costs -- which they don't operate themselves (freakin' Jeff Bezos seems to profit from anything and everything nowadays). 

 

I highly doubt that NQ's investors are happy when they see the subscriber churn rates. The only way this works if is you have a stable and growing base of subscriptions. 

 

The truth is, NQ did a great job pitching this product to everyone -- even investors bought into this concept and believed that retaining 50k-100k+ users would be easy. 

Interesting figures. But that is not anywhere near a complete picture. I wager most of the 11 mil was to catch up on past debts to get started. From what I see they operated in the negative in the beginning. Plus there is a ton of overhead in gaming business. I mean a real and complete list, not the mandatory publicly released records. What I do see is that the investors (all 10 of them) have faith enough to pump cash in. And it seems there are 3 major investors. I doubt they are caring about short term gains, the most common thing in online games is they are considered long term investments. I am sure they know that they may not reach 11 mil in revenue next year and while I am sure they would love it, I doubt that is their goal. 99% of a brand new businesses never see any profit until 5 years after their first start.

 

The funny thing is that investment money is not income per se, it comes with a lot of strings and conditions. It is meant as seed money and can usually only be used for very specific things, or else you face embezzlement charges. He most likely has a time period to reach X amount of income during X amount of time span before they pull funding.

 

I agree that the investors may be getting nervous because, to paraphrase the game itself, it looks like they may need to do a hella lot mining by hand to recoup their investment. But there is more to it than that. And we don't know the stipulations. This is most likely the reason why NQ top brass is attempting to compromise between their vision and their customers. Other games with a secure income base would likely ignore it and just balance it out over a year or more if they even cared.

 

And I agree, he did a great ad campaign! If that ad is ever realized, I am sure 100k would be a walk in the park, and I am sure THAT is what they, NQ and investors alike, are shooting for.

 

[Greydog]

On 12/15/2020 at 6:55 PM, Ahzzmandius said:

On the damage.. instead of a hard count limit on restoration... make each repair restore only 1/2 of the lost HP. Permanently. Eventually the part will be repairable BUT it won't have enough HP to be worth using in a fight. Even lightly bumping the part would damage it to being broken. 

 

This is a good idea, but I think 1/2 is still a bit much. If you look at how other mmo's handle permanent damage and decay, the increments are smaller and normally only apply on crits. I'm not sure if we have crits in this game, if not it could be when a certain amount of points are hit, a % of that would be permanently removed, the larger the hit, the larger the %. Eventually becoming not worth using as Ahz proposed. This way, if an element is taken out with a bunch of small hits there's a chance it won't take any permanent damage, whereas, if an element is taken out in one hit it could receive up to 1/2 permanent damage.

 

I would also suggest that there could be a new talent/profession created here as well. Have machines, schematics and talents that players use so that severely damaged items could be rebuilt and regular damage could be repaired in a more efficient manner, allowing players to open repair shops. Rebuilding would restore a large portion of the permanent damage depending on the players skill, but not all of it.

[GraXXoR]

8 hours ago, michaelk said:

 

 

Less currency supply means deflation -- each unit of currency is worth more because there's less of it to go around. 

 

The fact that the game doesn't have a way to print money other than daily login and bots...it's another one of those core design issues that should have been thought about a long time ago. 

 

 

So just imagine a universe where all the hordes money the mega orgs possessed had gone back into the marketplace instead of being squandered on overpriced bot sold magic potions to keep their trinket machines running. 
 

All they needed to have to encourage the orgs to spend rather than horde is a goad, a trigger to spend rather than save. 
 

And that should have been decay and maintenance of mega factories and power needs. 
 

They should have been subcontracting other orgs and players to meet those needs. 

The only way I can see ℏ injected into the market place in a game without NPCs  (which really are just mobile bots) is if it were an ingame Bitcoin like asset that the players had to generate or mine or convert from raw materials/energy. 

[Rocketman697]

My sincere thanks to NQ for their efforts to make this game.  I think it has great potential, but wanted to give some candid feedback on my experience. 

 

I've been enjoying this game throughout the beta, mostly as a solo player who has focused on industry.  I was starting to recruit players into my org and also belong to another org.  I have a modest but capable factory (until now) where I have been making products such as lights, displays, doors, etc. and successfully selling them on the market.  I invested the profits into crafting ships and expanding my base.  I enjoyed the market and crafting very much until this update.  (https://discord.com/channels/184691218184273920/748572194463940759/789842770884821022)

 

Now my factory is nearly useless.  I don't have enough talent points to access much of my industry and refineries, plus I would need to buy expensive schematics.  What am I supposed to do with a factory full of machines I can't access?  I can't earn credits other than mining, which is very tedious.  Without credits, fuel and materials, I can't build or fly ships or build bases and factories.

 

You haven't nudged me away from solo play (a direction I was already heading).  Instead you have pushed me off the cliff.  I tried to train using the talent points I had (a very tedious and obscure process) and ended up with a useless factory that I can't do anything with, ships I can't fly and nothing to do but mine.  I could join a large org, but my vision of building up a smaller org and recruiting players is dead.  I was very active in the market, now I can't make anything to sell.

 

I will not be playing DU anymore, at least until the gameplay changes in such a way that solo players/small orgs can have a path other than endless grinding in the mines.

[Honvik]

Oddly a few days on and some of those changes have not been rollbacked still.