Developer failure while in a pandemic Situation

[TranscendRat]

Hello,

 

as things have developed since the last patches, the game seems dead. A lot of Player left and the activity has decreased. For a MMO this is as good as a buriel.

 

What makes me angry is just the fact that the real world is in a pandemic Situation were we are forced to be at home and have massive decreased social contacts. Something like a online game is one of the few things left to stay in touch with fellow humans. Something that keeps you sane and busy.

 

As a Developer who is offering a social plattform, the latest actions of Nova Quark are more than questionable. With the last patches the little activitys that the game had to offer were killed. There is not much to do anymore, but further a lot of frustration was induced in the player community. Instead of comforting the player, Nova Quark just slapt them in the face.

 

Maybe the changes are needed for the game, but there was no reason to do this before the real world is stable again. They took one of the few things away people had left to do and I just cant figure out why.

 

Of course those are subjective arguments. It is just how I feel about it and I want to share those feelings.

[Kurosawa]

You can blame NQ for a lot of things, but being a social platform is not one of them, that is just not their primary goal.

Perhaps you should head over to the DU discord (or some other social network), hell there might even be a discord with voice chat.. teams/zoom ?

 

as for the pandemic that well last until Q3 2021 perhaps even Q4. But don't worry you can do it, you do not disappear or evaporate just because you do not see other people,  you silly extrovert

 

[Bobbie]

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[TranscendRat]

I think my argumentation displays that I´m not silly, my engagement in a online game that I´m not a extrovert and I´m pretty sure that I´m not running from my self. Further I do not blame Nova Quark, I just question the latest decisions and the effect they had on the game and the player community. 

 

What I cant understand is why a crowdfunded game were player, including myself, investet as much or more than a tripple A titel increases the grind factor dramaticly and pushes away player who were already engaged in the game. I was playing with people who I never saw again after the patch. Thats more than sad in times were the world is already stressed out.

[Xennial]

2 hours ago, TranscendRat said:

I think my argumentation displays that I´m not silly, my engagement in a online game that I´m not a extrovert and I´m pretty sure that I´m not running from my self. Further I do not blame Nova Quark, I just question the latest decisions and the effect they had on the game and the player community. 

 

What I cant understand is why a crowdfunded game were player, including myself, investet as much or more than a tripple A titel increases the grind factor dramaticly and pushes away player who were already engaged in the game. I was playing with people who I never saw again after the patch. Thats more than sad in times were the world is already stressed out.

 I applaud the absurdity of wrapping the world wide pandemic into some attempted guilt trip to cover up the standard pissing and moaning about the patch.

 

DU is not a social platform, it is a multplayer game. If you need therapy due to isolated feeling I suggest finding a professional or calling a help line. You might also try actual social platforms like Facebook and its kin or pick up the phone and call a friend or family.

[Towakin]

What you fanboys totally miss is the fact the OP pointed out: During lockdowns more people play (online) games. NQ managed to "kill" their game in such a favorable situation, thus proving it was a shit idea they went with.

 

This is a fact that can not be argued. Lots of people voted "this is shit, I won't play it anymore", so stop this god damn cringe fanboying. The patch wasn't thought through at all, it was a terrible idea to do it this way and not even the math was correct, and I find people like you attacking anyone who spells this out cancer.

[Emptiness]

A better way to implement the schematics would be to make them optional at first (to give players time to switch over and not kill all factories dead instantly) and tweak based on player feedback and only then make the schematics mandatory.

 

Instead, they made them mandatory, full stop, and chaos reigned. 

[Burble]

A lot of people are online every night enjoying the game and new people are coming in every day.

 

 

[Deintus]

It would be interesting if NQ released exact numbers of logins for the game at the end of each week. I know some people are still playing, and I know some people aren't. Much more said than that by anyone not a part of NQ is speculation.

[Atmosph3rik]

?

[Arctic_fox]

Honestly i think the current "low player" count and people "fleeing" is a mixture of things going on. Even if we assume towakins interpitation of the OP is correct just saying "durr NQ R SUXZOR No R CANZ DEVEloPE game" is not the answer. However handwaving the mistakes away and claiming the game is just a rough diamond and that JC is god and the NQ staff his angles is also not correct.

 

The truth lies in the middle. This is obviously a first game for NQ, while they have made many mistakes they have also done many things right as well. As this is there first game they have many advantages and disadvantages. I.E not having a loyal fanbase with expectations ah la FO76. However they also lack the experince to know how to best handle the players or what will ballence vision/gameplay/player expectations/communications ect the best for the type of community they want to create. .23 being a perfect example, good patch on paper for what the game is advertised as. Bad patch in practice due to lack of other content and investments by players with limited other choices.

 

This is before you take into consideration the fact there are also external and internal factors at play as well for the state of the game as it sits. For example using towakins interpretation of the OP as my base for answering here. I.E lots of players have left in favorable conditions for NQ just for clarification.

 

Its plain and simply not as straightforward as that, sure many people are stuck at home bored out of their everloving minds. Many normal activitys are cut off and so they turn to gaming as a last or first resort in the masses, meaning the pool of players DU stands to attract is fuller, deeper, and wider then ever before. However many other much larger better known less niche companies know this as well. You are seeing vastly deeper and longer running discounts then is the usual, many epic exclusives are migrateing to steam and many long anticipated games have released back to back to back.

 

This means while the conditions are massivly in NQs favor, they also have a ton more competition for players attention. Additionally many players wallets are being squeezed hard by the lockdowns due to reduced or eliminated hours, positions, jobs. So money is much tighter and more grudgeingly handed out. DU is a good game, even acknowledgeing the glareing issues and planet sized holes in the game. Its at least on par with other sandbox games like space engineers.

 

However, due to the aforementioned issues and holes. I.E .23, the bugs and lack of features as well as the seeming disconnect between the devs and players over the vision. As well as the aforementioned competition. This means DU has a much narrower margin to ballence the game on.

 

Every mistake they make is more heavily resented and amplified by players due to the competition they have and how precious money is for many players. Additionally those same players are far less likely to be patent and stick around as there are just so many other "better" more content filled games to chose from. Adding to this chaos is how much they will resent spending money for A and decideing they got B out of it. A perfect example of this is the carebear vs rustys fight going on I.E pvp for pvps sake and screw anyone not tough enough to survive or highly limited pvp and vast pve and world building.

 

If you mix all of this with the holidays and people being home and likely spending more time with families and playing with new gaming systems/games then throw the resentment from the old guard who dislike the direction NQ has gone with things or feel NQ has ignored their advice....well you end up with what we are seeing now.

 

A lot of the more casual players leaving for "greener" pastures with no one able to tell if they will come back when DU is more feature rich or if DU has driven them away for good. Angry old guard who are yelling "we told you so", rustys demanding no safe zones and orbital bombardment 24/7 without any consideration towards longevity of the game. Carebears wanting expanded pve and screw the pvp griefers amd trolls. Anyone in the middle who just enjoys the game for what it is and trying to make constructive suggestions getting attacked by all sides and accused of everything under the sun and the game getting a broken nose and two black eyes.

 

And keep in mind this is really only the footnotes version of events. There is a LOT more to this then that. But i already had a wall-o-text that most will ignore and cherrypick apart to support their own arguments so meh.

[Sabretooth]

I first came in contact with this game in 2017. I was so excited, WOW, player created content only and all one 1 server!! I started to play the game 'Avorion' to start learning how to build. beginning of 2020 I started with Space Engineers to take my building skills to the next level.

 

The August 2020, DU comes out, the building part is very frustrating because of voxelmancy. Yes we have seen beautiful things, but 95% is a box (bases and ships!!). And then comes 0.23 update. Now the building part is harder (because you cant just start building) because of schematics. Remember when we started, you got your first industry unit and finally able to make an S-container? Or the time it took to save up materials for an dynamic L and wait 3 days before its finished? No can do now, buy the schematic first please!

 

The only thing going for this game is the single server thing and the fact that Im at home a lot f the time. If this wasnt the case, the game would be dead already. Filling up a L container with ore takes at least 2 hours (imagine you have to scan and find the nodes too, youll be busy for 4 hours!) If it wasnt for this pandemic I wouldnt have the time to be grinding 3-4 times a week so I could enjoy and actually play(not grind) the game once a month.

Also, after 3 months and 9mil of daily quanta, I had no money in my pocket. So I think a lot of people, just like me, where already spending all of their money.

 

So yes I agree that they killed it in a time where they should have attracted more players because everybody is at home.

[TranscendRat]

Thank you for the response. My intention was to share my feelings. I invested in this game because I love to create and be around others who create. This was inhibit by the last patch.

 

I can not live with the fact that now the only way of expansion, and expansion is the base of a builder game who claims that player shape this universe, is to grind the boring and scanner wise frustrating mining game. What means the only other way to generate money for shematics is to offer services to player who do the boring mining game.

 

I don´t wan´t to profit from the frustration and mind numbing activitys from my fellow players. I play a game for joy. Not for labor. And I want the same for everyone. We should not obey to a system that forces us into heavy grind. Because we finance this game. We fill it with life and reason. For that we should get treated right and be heard. Our wishes should matter. I demand democracy.

 

Since some post questioned my health situation: it is true. I feel isolated and mentaly fragile. But I guess thats true for a lot of peeps atm. Thats why this game was so important to me. It gave me a relief, brought me together with peeps to play with, to achiev something and over all to have fun. It kept me sane. The patch hit me hard in this sense. Because it reduced the overall activity and joy. Thats why I say I want to share my feelings. Because it struck my heart rather than my mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Burble]

 

TranscendRat - Come play with us before you decide to really quit. We are building hover race courses and gliding games and generally have a good laugh for hours every day playing the system that is in place now. I appreciate your honesty about how you feel  on a deeper level and find it brave that you throw it out here. Come play, we are waiting for you.

 

The biggest problem with this rather toxic forum now is that of  people not understanding what a sandbox is.

People saying there is nothing to do now that industry is dead.

 

There was never anything to do unless you can imagine that a space battle is fun, or building a giant complex is fun, or building a beautiful and well performing ship is fun, or role playing as you interact and trade with other humans is fun. Anything that is fun in this game requires imagination and friends with imagination to play it with. If the only reason a person plays is to amass space money and store away space resources then why even bother?

We have already made games to play within the game, quite a few of them.. and guess what...they are fun. Many of us are enjoying DU as it stands.

 

Building is still very affordable. Daily bonus is enough to get a honeycomb schematic and a honeycomb refiner. Mining for one hour will get you enough ore to build a huge building. The doom and gloom outlooks about it being impossible to do anything in the game are simply not accurate and it hurts the game if you turn away a new person with this dramatically exaggerated behaviour.

It is not fanboi behaviour to look at the positives or to describe how better to enjoy what there is so far.  My friends and I are always talking privately about what NQ could improve, what they fucked up on, what they did well. But we do not feel the need to constantly whine in public in a way that could further damage the chances of the game succeeding. Because.... duh...if we turn new people away then our self fulfilling prophesy may actually come true and the game might just fail.  This entitled and self centred outlook is so incredibly selfish and short sighted it makes me write this kind of response in the vague hope that even one person will take a look at them self, stop behaving like a spoilt teenager and make the decision to either shit or get off the pot.

It's really starting to resemble the angry boyfriend who claims he has no love remaining for the ex girlfriend..... but just cannot leave her alone or allow her to move on and find new happiness.

[Mirthy Marc]

My primary criticism of the game and the patch is that NQ being in the game development business should have definitely anticipated how fast industry would build in the initial Beta and therefore incorporated the schematics at that point in time.  I say this because my son and I played the game together and he quit over the patch and I, a very ignorant individual when it comes to game development,  actually made this comment to him prepatch "I am surprised NQ allowed us to build all of our industry without having more specific talents to do so."  My point being that if I could recognize this without being in the industry then why the hell didn't NQ realize this before allowing us all to create industry units that are now junk.  I thought it was bad enough to justify a wipe immediately after the patch; however now too much time has gone by and I am not sure I would vote for a wipe at this time.  My current philosophy is to give NQ a chance to redeem themselves with the new content they incorporate in the first quarter of 2021 especially the mission system which will hopefully include a balance of PvE and PvP content so it appeals to all players. 

[TranscendRat]

Thanks for this invitation Burble. I might come back to it because I by my self are interested in creating content. The problem with that is to generate the resources for it has become a problem. For the size of builds I do the login bonus is by far not enaugh. I´m not interested in mining a hour per day. Ingame I set up scanners and logistics to aquire t3+ ores. Because with them I could grind what I need to build in 20 minutes. This is all gone now since the market broke. My assets have become worthless at this point. I swapped to skill me towards handling to make a new income methode, just to figure out that everyone did the same and there is nothing more to upgrade. All of this together with the fact of the decreased player number and overall activity is simply frustrating.

 

I understand your argumentation and you are right that just crying and yelling wont help. This is the reason why I write the posts. To encourage the discussion. It is not meant to blame or to demonize. But  just to be silent as you mentioned does not solve the problem. Still, my major point is that there was no need for the patch before there are no other ways implementet to generate money, like missions. NQ shut down the game activity without offering alternatives. To do this in christmas times and while in a pandemic was a big failure. People left. The game suffered.

 

The reason that I´m still here is simply because I hope the best for the game. But NQ should talk and listen to the players. Now more than ever. Because without us this universe does not live.

 

[Burble]

I get what you are saying, for sure.

In terms of size of build, the one I am making right now covers 9 hexes, a whole lake. So I know what you mean about scale. It is harder to make money to complete my task now for sure, but not impossible. Just harder. I could say that it is a grind and make it sound negative. Or I could say to myself it is a long and committed work that will end with the result I want and find it very satisfying when it is done.