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So, about patch 0.24


blazemonger

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It looks like NQ is rushing a new patch and with them starting to release devblogs here's my prediction:

 

0.24 will release either 25 February or 4 March with:

  • Mission system
  • New textures/assets
  • Org Wallets
  • "improvements" to jetpack
  • Creative mode

 

 

EDIT 15/02: Update as I forgot the big one for 0.24

EDIT 19/02: added the "major new change".. jetpack can be disabled in space

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5 minutes ago, Shredder said:

I wish they would ditch the ridiculously low risk warp mechanic and actually introduce some pvp to the game.

 

NQ has said the PVP revamp is to come after this patch.. I'd say maybe June..
 

I am pretty sure they are rushing this patch to try and create time to work on that, obviously that wil mean that after this patch, NQ sill all but vanish from the community platforms and go back to crunch mode for 3-4 months hoping to be able to make PVP work.

 

Obviously I am purely speculating on this patch but seeing the short time between 0.23 and this one (10-11 working weeks) they wil not have had much time to get anything substantial done with 0.23 causing much more work after the fact amongst other things.

 

We'll see

 

 

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1 minute ago, blazemonger said:

 

NQ has said the PVP revamp is to come after this patch.. I'd say maybe June..
 

I am pretty sure they are rushing this patch to try and create time to work on that, obviously that wil mean that after this patch, NQ sill all but vanish from the community platforms and go back to crunch mode for 3-4 months hoping to be able to make PVP work.

 

Obviously I am purely speculating on this patch but seeing the short time between 0.23 and this one (10-11 working weeks) they wil not have had much time to get anything substantial done with 0.23 causing much more work after the fact amongst other things.

 

We'll see

 

 

Surely they have different teams working on different aspects of the game. So the time between patches is purely for testing?

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1 minute ago, Musclethorpe said:

My prediction, the mission system will fail at its primary purpose. The money to be made from it will pale in comparison to mining, as in no contest.

That is a given.. not that NQ will realize it and so there will be a mining nerf afterwards as "there are other ways to make money now" ..

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3 minutes ago, Musclethorpe said:

My prediction, the mission system will fail at its primary purpose. The money to be made from it will pale in comparison to mining, as in no contest.

To me its fine that freelancers get less money then industrialist.

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4 minutes ago, Scavenger said:

To me its fine that freelancers get less money then industrialist.

Certainly true. I expect that is not how NQ sees it though. Their expectation is that the mission system will be the mechanic that becomes the one players use to make money, everything they (JC) have said point sin that direction. So they will do what they need to make that happen as they have done before when they felt players did not follow their intended way of playing the game.

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39 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

Certainly true. I expect that is not how NQ sees it though. Their expectation is that the mission system will be the mechanic that becomes the one players use to make money, everything they (JC) have said point sin that direction. So they will do what they need to make that happen as they have done before when they felt players did not follow their intended way of playing the game.

Unless shipping is another 10%er activity like industry. There are only a few major shippers after all: DHL, Fedex, UPS, etc.

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I predict that the mission system will just be an interface for what we are already doing (and probably a buggy one).  Mine and get paid, but less than you would if you just mined it yourself and sold it on the market.  Or maybe hauling stuff, which is VERY expensive to do.  There are only a few rich orgs who can afford to pay what it costs to do it and so far those guys hold all the cards so we will probably be hauling at a loss.

 

Like this great deal I was once offered...

 

A well known rich org offered me the opportunity of  using one of their haulers (after a hefty deposit) to deliver their stuff for free so I could maybe use that hauler for other jobs.  And even worse, that ship ended up having to be reworked because it couldn't even do the job.  What they really wanted was free testers and free deliveries. I already have an org full of haulers.  I have one of the BEST ship builders in the game in my org. What I don't have is people who want to actually pay me enough to make any kind of a profit to haul anything.


I doubt an interface to make the same kinds of deals with the same kinds of uber rich orgs will change much.  One way or another we are all destined to be slaves to those who cheat and exploit the system (and/or our fellow players) so they can just sit back and build whatever they want without having to lift a finger. 

 

I already live in that world.  Not gonna play a game that wants to put me through the same thing in my free time.  I've about given up tbh.

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5 hours ago, blazemonger said:

It looks like NQ is rushing a new patch and with them starting to release devblogs here's my prediction:

 

0.24 will release either 25 February or 4 March with:

  • Mission system
  • New textures/assets
  • More graphic improvements
  • Org Wallets

 

And maybe

  • Asteroid mining
  • Mining units
  • further character customization

No, it's a 'big number patch'.  It has to also contain some sort of well-intended-but-completely-gamebreaking surprise change as well as some things which sound good but end up being a little disappointing.  They still have a few left -- power changes which could completely break most of the ships in game would be a fun one.  Perhaps they could temporarily disable the safe zone for a few hours and let whoever gets online first blow up a load of peoples' stations then just switch it back on so they can't retalliate?  They have territory warfare of course, which could completely upend and ruin the game depending on how it gets implemented, forcing people to unbuild everything and move it somewhere else.
 

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Territory warfare is territory warfare, if you're a solo player with 1 hex on some random planet that's your own fault. The point of Du being a civilisation builder was that people build up together and create their own safezones as countries, form alliances etc. But none of that happens or is needed with DU being half the game it is + the almost infinite safezones.

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The cynic in may says that if this is introduced, it's just going to be a nanomarket window with a dropdown selection from about half a dozen mission types, a free-text box (limited to 500 characters), a price field and a deadline date field. And *maybe* a simple text search function.


Everything else introduced into this game recently has been coded at a junior intern level of sophistication... I don't see why this will be any different.

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1 minute ago, GraXXoR said:

The cynic in may says that if this is introduced, it's just going to be a nanomarket window with a dropdown selection from about half a dozen mission types, a free-text box (limited to 500 characters), a price field and deadline.


Everything else introduced into this game recently has been coded at a junior intern level of sophistication... I don't see why this will be any different.

So you think you will be able to take a mission just anywhere? I would think having a centralized mission control where we can pile more junk in the way was the way to go.

 

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Whatever it will be, it is going to be whatever they could throw together with the least amount of effort. And then NQ will say something like <JC voice>Guys, we know this is an early version, but we will make it much better I promise</JC voice>. And then after some weeks of putting out fires from 0.24, NQ will go into silent mode again for 0.25, and we will be stuck with some subpar clunky mission system for a couple of years at least..

 

I would like nothing more then to be proven wrong. But all historical evidence point to the scenario I just described.

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If NQ just provided an API that allowed the community to build all these tools, the game would probably be in a much better state.

 

The entire UI/UX experience in DU is HTML/CSS based and it's a lousy example of that. The UI is boring, crude and stale, the UX is inconsistent and generally confusing with way too many clicks and not enough options to.

 

Outside of a reskin, the UI has not changed since pre-alpha. The one size fits all copy/paste framework elements used are not suitable for many of the more data intensive functions they need to present and there seems to be no one at NQ who understands that.

 

 

But NQ is hardly, if at all, aware of how anything they do impacts the game, they are oblivious to the fact that the player base has turned them into a meme and mockery, they even think it's funny I understand. That should tell you something about their "understanding" of the situation they are in. It's becoming more and more obvious that NQ is a sleepwalking developer, completely clueless about their obvious failures and mistakes. It's all fun and games and nothing is an issue really. And that is an attitude that sets their game up for one thing an done thing only..

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On 1/28/2021 at 11:47 PM, blazemonger said:

It looks like NQ is rushing a new patch and with them starting to release devblogs here's my prediction:

 

0.24 will release either 25 February or 4 March with:

  • Mission system
  • New textures/assets
  • More graphic improvements
  • Org Wallets

 

And maybe

  • Asteroid mining
  • Mining units
  • further character customization

so boring if NQ doesn't do anything for PvP yet ...

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I sometimes feel bad that we so negative (to level, that CMs probably avoid this topics as RL police not patrol some more... difficult neighborhoods), sure rank and file devs too not having fun reading this (if they do).

 

It will be to see NQ reversing this somehow, because ball mostly on their side. May be public test server helps to establish better connection.

 

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8 hours ago, blazemonger said:

Outside of a reskin, the UI has not changed since pre-alpha. The one size fits all copy/paste framework elements used are not suitable for many of the more data intensive functions they need to present and there seems to be no one at NQ who understands that.

And a shite reskin at that!  Basically fixed nothing, added huge swathes of wasted space and increased the click per action ratio. 

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On 1/29/2021 at 5:35 AM, GraXXoR said:

The cynic in may says that if this is introduced, it's just going to be a nanomarket window with a dropdown selection from about half a dozen mission types, a free-text box (limited to 500 characters), a price field and a deadline date field. And *maybe* a simple text search function.


Everything else introduced into this game recently has been coded at a junior intern level of sophistication... I don't see why this will be any different.

From time to time I read that NQ has 100 employees, but the added content we are seeing does not correspond to this number. More like 5-10 20? people so the rest are either working on very long term future updates that have been hired recently so we don't see their effort yet  and single shard engine tech or there is a really big problem at NQ that won't be solved.

 

 

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29 minutes ago, Hiturn said:

From time to time I read that NQ has 100 employees, but the added content we are seeing does not correspond to this number. More like 5-10 20? people so the rest are either working on very long term future updates that have been hired recently so we don't see their effort yet  and single shard engine tech or there is a really big problem at NQ that won't be solved.

Question of how NQ sturctured, operating and staffed is extreamly untransperent.

 

Here is like transperent indy studio info looks like:

https://anvilgamestudios.com/presskit/#credits

 

You find nothing like this with NQ beyond their initial KS skeleton team listing 5 years ago, that likely seriously changed. It may be 100 empoyes, maybe 50, who knows, may be 10 of them making game and others mining bitcoins on your PCs : ) Also NQ have sub-divisions (France and Canada) likely not only for access to people, but also some creative bookkeeping/legal magic (as some of more investegative noveans suspect).

 

https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.novaquark.e74c2b8664be9a2c7fc6e1ed616e276f.html

https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.novaquark_inc.981afa95a964419e3a26467bf4a292c7.html

 

So, in short, its impossible to figure anything out at this front without serious inside, only wild guesses.

 

 

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