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an apology to naunet for creating a thread that got out of hand


ELX987

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a thread i created that was aggressive in nature but sparked a good conversation got out of hand when an individual exposed a LinkedIn profile of an NQ employee.

 

Naunet has since closed said topic due to that one persons comment. 

 

my words and opinions stand on my original thread, but i feel NQ is right for closing it because more exposure could in-sue and i don't want that, my original thread was to criticize not to attack/assault NQ. 

 

I think NQ are good people, and should be treated as such, regardless of the games state, we are all human. 

 

again, i apologize.

 

(edit, said criticism in the original thread has been acknowledged by NQ, thank you for your honesty)

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Hey man, it's all good. :) Thank you for the heartfelt apology and explanation of your intentions.

It's important to me that we all remember to balance our passions and concerns with empathy and a pro-social mindset. That's all.

 

21 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

Wouldn't it have been enough to leave the post open and just remove the link? The topic itself was interesting.


I chose not to moderate anybody and remove the thread as we usually would, because I agree that it's an interesting and valid topic that should be allowed to stand.

 

I'll consider unlocking the thread in time, but for now I need my message enforcing some important boundaries to be loud and clear (and unable to be buried by other commenters).

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doxxing is really not a fun thing and no one should fear the online mob just for showing up to work.  

 

Linked is especially bad for throwing up all your personal info and not having great tools to control what is or isn't public.

 

it is way too easy to use that info to track back to home addresses because it gives your full name and general location. 

  • under settings->visibility, restrict "who can see your last name" -- this helps prevent address lookups and should absolutely be the default.
  • under "edit public profile", disable for non-logged in members -- this helps prevent low effort search engine lookups targeting an org
  • under 'account preferences', set "showing profile image" to "network only" if you don't want randos seeing your face 

I'm sure i'm missing something, but linkedin's privacy settings are trash. they'll sue people for scraping public data, but will make zero effort to actually protect it or make it easy for users to control what is or isn't public. 

 

TLDR: linkedin sucks, set your last name to not be publicly viewable, and treat your full name like sensitive information 

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Ok, I wanted to alopogize too for my exessive detective-tin-foil-cap issues and fury.


And do a bit of clarification.

 

I contacted Philipp (author of publication in question) and he was kind enough to provide me with some additional comments.

 

1) He confirmed, that wrote this article on his own initiative, without contact/premediation with NQ (borrowing some official NQ media images to illustrate it).

2) Acticle based solely on his personal/buddies group gameplay experience (several hundred hours).

3) Most important part. Philipp explained, that arcticle, by his idea (and nature of his media), made for more broad and casual (external) audience, so he adapted info and presentation for them. While we, being more hardcore players can have different perception on game mechanics (0.23 patch) and priorities.

 

Personaly I strongly disagree with such approch to coverage, but still its great, that Philipp bothered with reply. 

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As the "guilty party" in this matter I guess an apology is in order, yes. To be frank it's something I was afraid might happen due to my frustrations with the way NQ is handling the game as a whole. Many times I have removed posts/response before clicking send, this time one got away from me. I stand by my feeling on the matter but yes, the link was to much I can agree.

 

To be honest part of me moving away from the game is that it's starting to bring out frustration I'd rather not see. So yeah.. it's time to move on, at least for now.. It's clear to me NQ is firmly convinced they are making the right calls and choices and nothing will change that so for me all I can do is hope I'm wrong and that the game will still be here when it's time to get back to it.

 

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2 hours ago, blazemonger said:

It's clear to me NQ is firmly convinced they are making the right calls and choices

IMO it's no longer a case of being convinced or choice. That time happened at the end of alpha.

They simply do not have the budget to change direction.

What ever they committed themselves at the summer of 2020 they either go with it until the end or they fail to deliver a game before budget ends.

 

At this point, any feature that is not scheduled and requires coding will not happen.

And any change they squeeze into the code decreases the chances of delivering a viable game.

 

IMO I even think that they already past the point of no return. They already know that the game will not be viable with the current budget, but they are hoping that this last fight to complete it can bring new investment or subscriptions.

 

It is quite sad to see this project go from "relaxed" to "emergency" like this.

Proper management should be to coordinate the several parts and teams of the project and establish a proper timeframe for each of the objectives for each group.

There are (technical and other) questions that were only asked at the end of alpha. Most of those questions could be predicted and answered before that time.

 

Most of those questions were not technical challenges and could be answered back then.

Examples:

  • Pending operations -> This is a very hard technical challenge. We acknowledge that NQ asked that question at the correct time and that betting on the wrong technology (home made UDP proto) was delayed its fix. Management does not have a big deal of responsibility here. The technical lead was invested too much time in the development of a technology that already existed before choosing to abandon that idea and buy the existing solution.
  • The lack of meaningful specialization -> this was not a technical challenge. NQ had warnings about this by the players for years. 1st they delayed any development about specialization to late alpha. Then they let PPL sink in the development for a year and only figured out that there was an issue after beta came out. Was it that hard to understand the problem 4 years ago? If 1 or 2 players could detect the problem back then, alone, how can a full team fail to detect it? How can a full team ignored the player warnings? 
  • The lack of excitement in 99% of the time players spend playing DU. Any current cellphone app currently successfully has 1000 metrics about the engagement of players on their app. And we are talking about free to play phone apps! how can NQ management fail to understand how vital this was? How is this only a problem of 2020-2021? How was this a technical challenge?

To me its 100% clear that NQ management style was like a coded program. With several things that had to be done and a sequential order to do them. And in this sequence several very important questions were delayed to even be asked to a very late time.

 

 

Why am I saying this? What is the advantage of me bashing NQ on this?

Several reasons:

1 - I hope, but don't expect, that DU is a success. In case NQ manages to salvage this, it is quite clear that in the future(after the storm as passed), management and development needs to adopt a different model.

2 - If DU fails, I want other current and future game developers, use this as an example of what not to do. So we don't get this frustration in a future investment.

3 - That players understand how too late "now" is, that they can calm down, reflect on the past. And hope for the future, without illusions that things can change just by talking to NQ. 

4 - That some NQ staff know that we know that you guys are not all part of the problem. We know some of you warned your management about the issues you were seeing and predicted. We know that some of you did your best and your best was quite good. And from your perspective it may seam like we are putting you all on the same bag, we are not. 

It is easy to thank exposed NQ staff like discord helpers, in game GMs, Forum staff for all their dedication in emergency situations. But if you are a programmer we know that bugs happen, we know that your conditions were not ideal, we know that you tried. We do not blame you.

We only blame you if you decided to ignore the warnings, if you disregarded your fellow programmer concerns without even taking the proper time to think about them. We blame you if you fired ppl that tried their best to give you advice.

 

 

There is nothing else to do but wait. Wait for release or wait for fail. Just wait while pray that the game is viable at release and hope if DU survives this, NQ learns and changes their management style.

Now it's not a time for NQ to change Staff, or management. Now it's not the time for NQ to change features. Finish what you are doing NQ. And GL

Edited by joaocordeiro
Minor syntax and orthographic fixes
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3 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:

IMO it's no longer a case of being convinced or choice. That time happened at the end of alpha.

They simply do not have the budget to change direction.

Yes and I'd certainly expect that.

 

That said though, I do not think they would change much, if anything if funding was not an issue because they have convinced themselves they are right and everyone else is wrong. This is why I can see them wondering what happened if/when the curtain falls.

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1 hour ago, le_souriceau said:

I contacted Philipp (author of publication in question) and he was kind enough to provide me with some additional comments.

Kudos to this Phillipp person for answering back, and kudos to you le_souriceau for actualy contacting him.

 

But this does not negate the fact that the piece reads like if someone went and told NQ marketing "write whatever you want about the game, and I will post it word for word in an article". In fact I don't think even marketing would have wanted to tell a story this rosy. And claiming it was written for a broad and casual audience with no foreknowledge of the game, actually makes it worse in this context.

 

And if you could get a comment from Phillipp about the reply made by NQ about the article, that would be gold. :p

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40 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:

IMO it's no longer a case of being convinced or choice. That time happened at the end of alpha.

They simply do not have the budget to change direction.

What ever they committed themselves at the summer of 2020 they either go with it until the end or they fail to deliver a game before budget ends.

 

At this point, any feature that is not scheduled and requires coding will not happen.

And any change they squire into the code decreases the chances of delivering a viable game.

 

IMO I even think that they already past the point of no return. They already know that the game will not be viable with the current budget, but they are hoping that this last fight to complete it can bring new investment or subscriptions.

 

It is quite sad to see this project go from "relaxed" to "emergency" like this.

Proper management should be to coordinate the several parts and teams of the project and establish a proper timeframe for each of the objectives for each group.

There are (technical and other) questions that were only asked at the end of alpha. Most of those questions could be predicted and answered before that time.

 

Most of those questions were not technical challenges and could be answered back then.

Examples:

  • Pending operations -> This is a very hard technical challenge. We acknowledge that NQ asked that question at the correct time and that betting on the wrong technology (home made UDP proto) was delayed its fix. Management does not have a big deal of responsibility here. The technical lead was invested too much time in the development of a technology that already existed before choosing to abandon that idea and buy the existing solution.
  • The lack of meaningful specialization -> this was not a technical challenge. NQ had warnings about this by the players for years. 1st they delayed any development about specialization to late alpha. Then they let PPL sink in the development for a year and only figured out that there was an issue after beta came out. Was it that hard to understand the problem 4 years ago? If 1 or 2 players could detect the problem back then, alone, how can a full team fail to detect it? How can a full team ignored the player warnings? 
  • The lack of excitement in 99% of the time players spend playing DU. Any current cellphone app currently successfully has 1000 metrics about the engagement of players on their app. And we are talking about free to play phone apps! how can NQ management fail to understand how vital this was? How is this only a problem of 2020-2021? How was this a technical challenge?

To me its 100% clear that NQ management style was like a coded program. With several things that had to be done and a sequential order to do them. And in this sequence several very important questions were delayed to even be asked to a very late time.

 

 

Why am I saying this? What is the advantage of me bashing NQ on this?

Several reasons:

1 - I hope, but don't expect, that DU is a success. In case NQ manages to salvage this, it is quite clear that in the future(after the storm as passed), management and development needs to adopt a different model.

2 - If DU fails, I want other current and future game developers, use this as an example of what not to do. So we don't get this frustration in a future investment.

3 - That players understand how too late "now" is, that hey can calm down, reflect on the past. And hope for the future, without illusions that things can change just by talking to NQ. 

4 - That some NQ staff know that we know that you guys are not all part of the problem. We know some of you warned your management about the issues you were seeing and predicted. We know that some of you did your best and your best was quite good. And from your perspective it may seam like we are putting you all on the same bag, we are not. 

It is easy to thank exposed NQ staff like discord helpers, in game GMs, Forum staff for all their dedication in emergency situations. But if you are a programmer we know that bugs happen, we know that your conditions were not ideal, we know that you tried. We do not blame you.

We only blame you if you decided to ignore the warnings, if you disregarded your fellow programmer concerns without even taking the proper time to think about them. We blame you if you fired ppl that tried their best to give you advice.

 

 

There is nothing else to do but wait. Wait for release, wait for fail. Just wait, pray that the game is viable at release and hope if DU survives this, NQ learns and changes their management style.

Now it's not a time for NQ to change Staff, or management. Now it's not the time for NQ to change features. Finish what you are doing NQ. And GL

If they cant or dont have the budget they should then explore all avenues to making money to fill the budget. This game is a train wreck at best in the current format.

 

Until they open up P2W servers, host some kind of gold farmer type E-Bay type thing where you can buy/sell scripts, skins, mats, ships, etc and its not rediculous to do so, or anything else like real estate, or just plain out renting servers they will never make money drawing out subs for 27 years to finally play the game. The sub model simply is not sustainable in this regard at least not without content to back up the sub model. There are many things they need to do but if they dont have the budget is it worse to change the model and save the game or continue on driving off the cliff.

 

Opening up this game to the modding community or running this like Emperium and or just plain using crowd sourcing and just saying hey we want X system, X skin, X whatever and letting the community help them turn this thing around has and will always remain an option if they should just ask. There are plenty of talented people still here but not for much longer.

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1 minute ago, Warlander said:

If they cant or dont have the budget they should then explore all avenues to making money to fill the budget

But that also requires code changes, that also requires budget to implement.
IMO, at this point, to implement money making mechanisms, they would have to go back to their Investors and ask "X millions for Y monetization feature"
Asking this extra investment can always be done after release fails.

 

So let's pray plan A works.

 

PS: dude, chose a paragraph and quote it. It's visually ugly to quite 50 lines of text.

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1 hour ago, le_souriceau said:

Ok, I wanted to alopogize too for my exessive detective-tin-foil-cap issues and fury.


And do a bit of clarification.

 

I contacted Philipp (author of publication in question) and he was kind enough to provide me with some additional comments.

 

1) He confirmed, that wrote this article on his own initiative, without contact/premediation with NQ (borrowing some official NQ media images to illustrate it).

2) Acticle based solely on his personal/buddies group gameplay experience (several hundred hours).

3) Most important part. Philipp explained, that arcticle, by his idea (and nature of his media), made for more broad and casual (external) audience, so he adapted info and presentation for them. While we, being more hardcore players can have different perception on game mechanics (0.23 patch) and priorities.

 

Personaly I strongly disagree with such approch to coverage, but still its great, that Philipp bothered with reply. 


Thanks for validating the information I brought back from the team, le_souriceau. :) It's nice to be able to close that loop.

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I was a bit surprised by the grimness (sp?) of the discussion. Spacegames seem to have some very devoted people fighting for the topics.

 

Back in the days when I was doing the "Make Concept, Make Business Plan, get Funding"-Thing with my "Babies", I always also thought of it as "product". All my heart was in the Idea and the concept, but I was pretty aware that whatever I do, it will be without success if I dont keep in mind what people want, and how many different playstyles I may see. No matter how passionate and emotional involved youre in a project, if you loose the ability to make a step back and change your point of view to adjust if needed your own view, you are already on the wrong track.

 

This game is funded by VC as well, and by that there is some pressure, yes, but also great freedom if things are going well. People leaving the game shortly after a release, no matter which one, will not look good to investors, so do not meeting timelines or budget-goals. But I would never guess whats is possible in a specific case or not, cause that really depends on the individual relationship with the VC-givers as well as their own situation. If they get in trouble, their investment in you may as well. However, there is always the option for the "next round" as well, but for that you better perform good, to achieve a good price for your shares.

 

I worked with many companies to get them back on track, which was actually part of my job in an earlier life, and many problems we see can have many, and especially maturity-related (that of the organisation ;) ) problems. However, speculating is one thing, but telling NQ what would be better and think of them as people without any plan is something I wouldnt allow me to do, at least not seriously :D Sometimes Plans dont work out, sometimes you have to try something, and when its done, it just dont works. We saw entire games not being released because their "boring", after years of development.

 

I could talk about this for hours, skills, softskills, organisations, processes, methods, but its your lucky day, I wont. Just want sum it up (in a phrase I really love): Dont use your limited insights as meassurements for the actions of others. If you dont understand what and why, then the first thing to do should be to ask "what could be the reason" and not "they are stupid!"

That doesnt provide better communication, which we all would love to see, but at least it may relax conversations a lot. Especially in understanding why some things are not there yet, and why the gras is always greener on the other side :D

 

Its is fascianting how fast things escalate in DU-Discussions. Relax guys, relax ;)

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22 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:

But that also requires code changes, that also requires budget to implement.
IMO, at this point, to implement money making mechanisms, they would have to go back to their Investors and ask "X millions for Y monetization feature"
Asking this extra investment can always be done after release fails.

 

So let's pray plan A works.

 

PS: dude, chose a paragraph and quote it. It's visually ugly to quite 50 lines of text.

Their current plan is dead in the water any way you slice it. Nothing short of a full re-design will save it in the condition and future content they plan to impliment. Some things are salvageable dont get me wrong but this is by far a failed concept. There is only so much time left to change course or they wont be able to keep the lights on at some point.

 

PSS: Dont really care.

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3 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Kudos to this Phillipp person for answering back, and kudos to you le_souriceau for actualy contacting him.

 

But this does not negate the fact that the piece reads like if someone went and told NQ marketing "write whatever you want about the game, and I will post it word for word in an article". In fact I don't think even marketing would have wanted to tell a story this rosy. And claiming it was written for a broad and casual audience with no foreknowledge of the game, actually makes it worse in this context.

 

And if you could get a comment from Phillipp about the reply made by NQ about the article, that would be gold. :p

Thanks! But I feel like little bit overstayed my welcome in this... story  (on several layers).


Author definitly seen forum topic and maybe he contact NQ (or they -- him) for some clarifications or something. Its up to them.

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12 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Kudos to this Phillipp person for answering back, and kudos to you le_souriceau for actualy contacting him.

 

But this does not negate the fact that the piece reads like if someone went and told NQ marketing "write whatever you want about the game, and I will post it word for word in an article". In fact I don't think even marketing would have wanted to tell a story this rosy. And claiming it was written for a broad and casual audience with no foreknowledge of the game, actually makes it worse in this context.

 

And if you could get a comment from Phillipp about the reply made by NQ about the article, that would be gold. :p

You are a particularly vindictive and horrible person arent you.  Even when something is PROVEN as BS you cant let it go.

Also great to see all the backhanded apologies in this thread.  Wise man once said - if you end an apology with a BUT it is worthless.......

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56 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

Also great to see all the backhanded apologies in this thread.  Wise man once said - if you end an apology with a BUT it is worthless.......

thats not axiomatic. You can apologize for the way you said something but still argue politely for your point of view. As long as a discussion is polite and everyone try to recognize the arguments of the counterpart, everything is fine. 

I really like the "Principle of Charity" for discussions. 

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On 2/16/2021 at 2:19 PM, CptLoRes said:

Kudos to this Phillipp person for answering back, and kudos to you le_souriceau for actualy contacting him.

 

But this does not negate the fact that the piece reads like if someone went and told NQ marketing "write whatever you want about the game, and I will post it word for word in an article". In fact I don't think even marketing would have wanted to tell a story this rosy. And claiming it was written for a broad and casual audience with no foreknowledge of the game, actually makes it worse in this context.

 

And if you could get a comment from Phillipp about the reply made by NQ about the article, that would be gold. :p

Some cranky old people in here.  How he described DU is the same way we all saw DU when we started in it.  After months, we become jaded, we start to realize that all those ships at the market are still there because, their owners don't even play the game anymore.  We realize that these massive orgs are actually mostly empty.  Nothing he said in the article is really inaccurate - the numbers of members in the org list has definitely grown over the months, and so has the number of ships at markets.  The guy just hasn't played enough to realize that they are empty growth.

 

And regarding the schematic changes, those are the only reason I came back to the game - they have revitalized the markets and made it possible to make money without mining, finally.  I've been buying ore and reselling elements and have finally saved up enough to start pushing toward some of the bigger industry units, without ever touching the mining tool.  The markets are stabilized and profit margins are slim (but positive) on easy to make items like containers, and big on hard to make items like AGGs - exactly the way it should be.

 

And, probably most importantly - if you don't like the fact that the game is dead, maybe let people make reviews without shouting shill.  For one, NQ should invest money into advertisement - more advertisement means more players, and that's just, how you sell a game.  But NQ didn't even pay this one, and they came away with a good impression of the game.  The game is in a better state now than it has ever been, except for lack of players - too many people got upset over 0.23, or got bored before it.  But, bring in new players who didn't lose anything in the patch, and they've got a full and alive (seeming) world with multiple options for how to make money.  Bring in enough of them, and it will become truly full and alive again

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2 hours ago, Dimencia said:

And, probably most importantly - if you don't like the fact that the game is dead, maybe let people make reviews without shouting shill.  For one, NQ should invest money into advertisement - more advertisement means more players, and that's just, how you sell a game.  But NQ didn't even pay this one, and they came away with a good impression of the game.  The game is in a better state now than it has ever been, except for lack of players - too many people got upset over 0.23, or got bored before it.  But, bring in new players who didn't lose anything in the patch, and they've got a full and alive (seeming) world with multiple options for how to make money.  Bring in enough of them, and it will become truly full and alive again

Exactly - Let's replace the old playerbase with a new audience who had no expectations and no money to invest in the game when it was on Kickstarter and had a vision that it doesn't fulfil today that we used on Kickstarter several years ago.

 

Since they have the money of the old players, we can then start to ignore them, since they are no longer important because we have a new playerbase. It doesn't matter who made it possible for the investors to raise more money for this project. We made it clear to them with the business plan and the fundings that there was interest.

 

...

 

Sorry for the biting tone in my text. But instead of building the game that they have actually presented to the public, the players who have always left feedback for several years are to be replaced by new ones? 

 

How about instead trying to solve the problem for once and bring back the people who made the game possible in the first place? Community bonding or closeness to the community looks very different to me than what we have. 

 

Nevertheless, a big kudo to the community management team that has to read through a lot here. You are proof that a battle helmet is needed at the front. :D


 

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I am fully aware that I am the cranky old bastard. There is something about NQ that brings out the worst in me.

 

But let's at least stick to the facts when we make arguments. This was not some newb looking at the game through rose-tinted glasses. According to the author himself the article was based on several hundred hours of personal play time.

 

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2 hours ago, SirJohn85 said:

Exactly - Let's replace the old playerbase with a new audience who had no expectations and no money to invest in the game when it was on Kickstarter and had a vision that it doesn't fulfil today that we used on Kickstarter several years ago.

 

Since they have the money of the old players, we can then start to ignore them, since they are no longer important because we have a new playerbase. It doesn't matter who made it possible for the investors to raise more money for this project. We made it clear to them with the business plan and the fundings that there was interest.

 

...

 

Sorry for the biting tone in my text. But instead of building the game that they have actually presented to the public, the players who have always left feedback for several years are to be replaced by new ones? 

 

How about instead trying to solve the problem for once and bring back the people who made the game possible in the first place? Community bonding or closeness to the community looks very different to me than what we have. 

 

Nevertheless, a big kudo to the community management team that has to read through a lot here. You are proof that a battle helmet is needed at the front. :D


 

How are you supposed to bring people back?  They played, they got bored, they quit.  They paid their subscriptions while playing, and afterward, sure you could say their money is being used to make a game for other people.  But I mean, they paid for the subscription knowing it would expire.  There was no guarantee that paying means the dev team will do exactly what they want.  And I am quite sure that if the game were rolled back to prior to 0.23, it wouldn't help the player counts, because prior to 0.23 is when most people quit.  We got to endgame easily in days, within weeks had a factory producing every item in the game, and within a month we were finished and had experienced all content in the game.  In the orgs I was in, there was one or two people upset about schematics - the rest were gone before they ever came out.  

 

If the industry and PVP updates weren't enough to bring them back, then what next?  Let the game continue to die, not bringing in any new players, while we wait and see if atmo PVP convinced them to come back?

 

Or, just advertise to new players who haven't already experienced the whole game

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56 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

I am fully aware that I am the cranky old bastard. There is something about NQ that brings out the worst in me.

 

But let's at least stick to the facts when we make arguments. This was not some newb looking at the game through rose-tinted glasses. According to the author himself the article was based on several hundred hours of personal play time.

 

Well yeah, I also have several hundred hours of playtime.  I still don't think anything he said was wrong or inaccurate.  I mean, what even are the proposed problems with what he claimed?  He says the planets are more alive than ever, well, they are - there are more constructs and signs and org advertisements than ever at the markets.  Big orgs with production lines and mining trips?  Yep, those definitely still exist, and definitely grew over months.  If he is even aware of the die-off (may have been a solo player), it doesn't invalidate any of the claims anyway

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