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Serious question. Did NQ give up on the community?


TonyTones

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I'm not trying to be a troll or overly negative but the interaction has fallen off of a cliff. Before .23 there were interviews pretty often, staff would communicate, Questions were answered. Perhaps we were spoiled and this new level of communication is just standard. I'm new to developing games but I actually wonder what's going on. 

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I am not sure which standard you mean. NQ has never done anything visible with people's feedback. I have also noted elsewhere: 

For what used to be a frequent presence of the CEO in some form, be it video blog, interviews, AMA, streams or whatever, it has become incredibly quiet. No, I don't count "what's to come" video as part of that. Because that's a mandatory video for a new year. In the past, JC was much more tangible. Today it's just a name you hear. At least for me.

 

And based on the facts that many new faces are seen in NQ and old ones left, I assume that there is a higher than average fluctuation. One could assume that 0.23 has significantly hurt them, considering that weekend support is being discontinued and that you see a lot of new faces on Starbase saying they are from DU. 

 

They don't even bother to announce the winner of the Valentine's Day building event here in the forum.

 

Personally, I don't know how you can call this professional communication towards a paying clientele. 

 

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I try not to speculate on reasons or intentions behind changes, but yes interaction on the forums has gone down over the last few months. Social media posts on twitter/facebook are still fairly active. There has been a wreck event and share the love contest this year as well. It seems that the more interactive forms of communication (forums, discord/support, and interviews) have gone down while the less interactive more curated content (social media posts, events, devblogs, tutorial page) has stayed the same.

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After being here since 2018 and closely following and awaiting uptimes during weekends the answer to your question is simply "yes".

there have been different days, where there was interaction with its costumers. but after their rush into the beta the bonds between the user base and the studio and its vision have drifted apart.

to my humble opinion DU has reached a point beyond repair (current state). maybe the tech they developed will work, maybe not (lag and performence problems have been around all along, upto today).

AVA is, lets say, "canceled" with no ETA. space pvp is a browser game in current state even territory warfare is not more than a concept. atmo pvp is going to be the same meaningless mess just with bad pilots crashing.

building and voxeling is nice.

industry is entirely like: farm t1 ore, sell it to the market bots ... for like 4 weeks at an 40h/week job (very like much much more) to build (get up running again) lets say a L-Container line.

we are at a state of the game, where it is inevitable to do a complete server wipe, or start with a broken game in terms of the eco and player/org developement level.

more over, the ATV folks spread the word ahead of 0.23(/0.22) that nq expects most of thier community to break apart due to the changes.

nq has given up on its playerbase. by now, not even the server tech is worth selling anymore.

it hurts, but its time to give up the 35x L-static-core base we dug out with only 3 active players and move on. hopefully nq will reconsider a revamp.

lots of players, like myself, are not going to invest more time into DU untill there is clarification in what direction du is going to move: shut down, revamp, be an mmo or be a simulation.

in case the path is going to be more  and more a simulation, i want a refund!

dont get me wrong, i not sorry for the thousands of hours i played du, but i realized its not going to be what i bought despite thier promises.

 

much love to you guys

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I've been playing now for about a month! Ver good and addictive 'BUILDING' game, but not much more. Dual Miner....I mean, Dual Universe needs PVE!!! The PVP is broken because there's no reason to PVP......if people started on the initial 3 planets (Alioth, Thedes, Madis) and they were all at war with each other (YES, YOU HAVE TO ESTABLISH FACTIONS FOR PEOPLE TO DO PVP PROPERLY, THIS WAS ESTABLISHED BACK IN THE 1980's.....when VIDEO GAMES were just starting!) PVE would save the game, please let me know your thoughts on this, 

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47 minutes ago, SpiceRub said:

I think NQ gave up on themselves.

 

”oh there’s people actually playing DU? ?

i don't blame anyone for giving up at this stage -- i think a lot of people working at NQ are waiting for the layoffs rather than quitting.

 

it's pretty obvious even from the outside that the tech is a complete mess and even the game's design is barely half-baked. 

 

I mean....they had one high-profile hire, Hrafnkell Oskarsson (Eve's original designer). He left or was let go after about 8 months. In his last 20 years of professional life, he's always spent at least 2 years at any company...NQ is the only exception. 

 

not exactly a great sign when your best talent no longer believes in the project or can't get along with its leadership. 

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8 hours ago, TonyTones said:

I'm not trying to be a troll or overly negative but the interaction has fallen off of a cliff. Before .23 there were interviews pretty often, staff would communicate, Questions were answered. Perhaps we were spoiled and this new level of communication is just standard. I'm new to developing games but I actually wonder what's going on. 

They've clearly abandoned their users. My guess is they're looking for a buyer for the tech and they'll be closing the game down soon. They just aren't acting like they intend to build a game anymore.

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I don't think they've completely abandoned anything.

If you click through a few of the staff here, most of the ones that actually check the forum, have come on the forum. A few developers and even NQ-Naunet, who supposedly left, has come online with their accounts in the last day (with NQ-Naunet being only 5 hours ago), as of the time of writing. I could be mistaken, but an ex-employee shouldn't have access to an account with moderation permissions.

Most of the staff accounts haven't been in use for a lot longer than just recently, probably because they never used it.
My sense here is that, internally, I don't think much has changed. I could be wrong though.
 

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5 minutes ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

Such as a player with expired sub shouldn't have access to the game? There are a lot of should-haves in DU.

That is very, very different situation. That is an automated system, this is an employee, supposedly, leaving NQ. Very, very different.

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41 minutes ago, EasternGamer said:

That is very, very different situation. That is an automated system, this is an employee, supposedly, leaving NQ. Very, very different.

Automated? In what way is the forum automated? 

 

Also...if she is leaving the company, she is likely finishing out the week, so could still have forum access. 

20 hours ago, SirJohn85 said:

And based on the facts that many new faces are seen in NQ and old ones left, I assume that there is a higher than average fluctuation. One could assume that 0.23 has significantly hurt them, considering that weekend support is being discontinued and that you see a lot of new faces on Starbase saying they are from DU. 

0.23 was bizarre move motivated more by JC's arrogance and pride than a real game design or business rationale -- don't get me wrong, industry was getting a little crazy, but people were having fun.

 

Instantly flipping the off switch on all those factories is a textbook "bad idea" in game development.

 

Beyond the specifics of 0.23, I think it was symptomatic of NQ's lack of experience and their arrogant leadership that couldn't be bothered to understand the game from a player's perspective. The only perspective that ever mattered was JC and his weird "ready player one" roleplaying. 

 

So I don't think NQ has "given up" on the community -- I think they never really cared to begin with. DU was always an expression of vanity and pride for its founder -- who was always going to do his own thing no matter how many voices in the community (or in his own damn company!) told him otherwise.

 

That won't ever change, 0.23 just made it more obvious. 

 

If you think DU's issues are obvious to us, they're even more obvious to the devs doing the work and vast majority of NQ's staff...hence the high turnover, low morale, and glacial pace of dev. 

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More communication would be nice.   But they lost their CM for whatever reason.  So they don't have a mouth piece.  I would rather them work on things and develop the game then spend time chatting it up with us here.

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