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DEVBLOG: THE FUTURE OF DU - Part 3 - Discussion Thread


NQ-Naerais

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Gas clouds? Asteroid scanning? SPACE TERRITORIES!?

 

Count me in!

 

I just hope that when you mention the "rebalancing of weapons" in PvP you will balance the damage difference between core sizes, as it is way to OP right now.

 

Also, how are you going to stop haulers which are mining ore from just warping away as soon as pirates approach them?

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Sounds good to me :)

 

By the way, if you need more ideas about the "BREAKING THE MONOTONY" part, I wrote a post on reddit sometime ago about a way to promote exploration & pvp for people who are not interested into mining.

 

I hope you'll read it :  here's the link.

 

Of course it's probably not so easy to implement, but you could keep this as a side note for later ;)

 

Edited by Luckso
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And all of this to be completed by the end of the year?

Why is NQ not coming clean and out by making it clear that release of the game will be pushed out

 

There is a lot in this blogpost that could be good, also a lot that could not. It's a lot of "working on, planning, looking at, considering, might, may". Where is the actual roadmap update that frankly is clearly needed as from this blogpost one can easily deduct that most of what is still to be done is not even in implementation stages yet and still on the drawing board if not in the conceptualize stage leading in to that stage.

 

Based on this blogpost, a release ready game is at least 18 months away, probably longer.

 

 

Also, IMO too much here seems to imply NQ is looking to make the game "more accessible" for new players. I am not sure how that is even needed. Why should surface gathering yield even more resources? and why do I get the feeling that NQ is actually trying to find a way to roll back schematics and "reimburse" those who bought them instead of designing and creating gameplay solutions that will allow _players_ to find and create schematics which can then be researched, enhanced, copied and brought to market.

 

for most of the mentioned mechanics there is no change or even a signal of progression in the concept of these from what was shared in December. Why is NQ rather clear in part 2 that they need to fix the back end and the core of their technology and then in part 3 just goes back to their usual spin on all the kewl things that are coming.

 

Overall, these three blogposts have not told us anything we did not yet know outside of maybe giving more clear signals that NQ is very, very far away from getting close to a game that could be released.

 

The actual value of these posts is minimal at best. It's fluff and filler. While I get that currently the company has other things to get sorted, why not communicate that more clearly and create time for yourself to make that happen. This just feels like it's mostly ignoring the reality of what NQ is going through which unfortunately is more of the same.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Sambo726 said:

So turning asteroid mining into an event and broadcasting to everyone where it is.  Well there went my "looking forward" to asteroid mining.

 

I was hoping they would just randomly respawn in space and you would have to find them and just have ships guard the miners while they mine.......

 

well, It's on a timer so I guess it depends on how long it takes before everyone knows where you are. And you can always bring an escort with you...

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Quote
  • Make it easier for newcomers to gather resources from the surface of planets without the need to dig;

 

 

I think the solution to this should involve something like the automated mining units, right away.

 

Leaving free resources all over the ground for new players makes the planets look really messy.  And the process of picking them up is pretty tedious.

 

Add more surface resources and it's just more clutter.  Make them less common with a higher payoff and it becomes a scavenger hunt that new players will not enjoy.

 

Giving new players the means to set up a low tier mining unit, that provides a small steady flow of resources, would skip all that mess.

 

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At the beginning of the dev blog it mentions how mining feels like the only way for new comers to make money, then it goes into how they plan on making this easier for new comers to make money by adding more different types of mining...

 

I think what is needed is something like agriculture, this is already a highly upvoted feature request, and can all be done above ground for new players as an alternative to mining. The dev blog stated they wanted more above ground ways for new players to earn money, so I think farming is the way to implement that.

 

In return this opens the future for other possible gameplay loops like maybe a basic needs system, or player run resturants, bars, farmer's markets, etc.

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Very interested in the mining changes, running the largest meganode supply chain in DU we would like to know what the future holds for our 100+ members who scan, mine and provide ore to the market.

 

Are meganodes being removed, and below surface mining as well.

 

The passive mining is great and for a group with a large volume of claimed hexes we are deighted to gain ore passively but this sounds like it will come at a cost of our miners and miners from all around the DU universe. 

 

More info would be much appreciated before you alter/remove one of the things that makes DU unique. 

 

 

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Mining Units  = Good.  Plus talents needed to use more shows maybe everyone can get 1 so thats handy.  Steady stream of gold? :)

 

Rest sounds ok.  I think for obvious reasons a timed roadmap helps a lot.

 

Honvik

Premier of the Empire

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-Surface harvesting has its place, but the rocks seriously clutter things visually, it may be advisable to cut their number down (say to a tenth) while increasing the time to collect them and their payoff. 

 

-Mining units will be a welcome addition for those of us that find mining tedious, but care must be taken as to their implementation lest you either end up with wealthy players immediately turning a hex with "good stats" in to a money factory that craters the value of materials gathered by newer players, or cause the existing player-base to go grab-happy and claim every tile they can afford to drop a TCU on (thus risking locking new players out of mining if too many tiles are either un-minable or stripped clean).

 

-Shields will be appreciated for people with visually complex designs and people that find repairs tedious, but it will probably need to come with a sizeable nerf to voxel if you don't want people to abandon it entirely when they realize they probably can't carry enough ammo to kill a shielded cube under current voxel stats.

 

-I look forward to finally having more/variant skins for weapons. It would be nice to get them on other elements too (not even major re-shapes, just alternate colors on the main color section so we aren't only stuck with bright red space engines, yellow containers/hovers, and grey everything else).

-Visual improvements to planets are appreciated, but there must also be care taken to ensure to doesn't slow loading things down, most pilots and explorers tend to appreciate the visual appeal of the terrain a lot less when they need to worry about the ground suddenly deciding to jump up and swat them from the sky, or shifting up slightly after they landed but before ship physics unload and breaking their ship.

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Lets not read too much into surface mining.  They could simply reduce the time the operations takes and call it done.  e.g.  Change one parameter and call it fixed.

 

"The reaction to changes introduced in 0.23 told us that there is more work needed here".  Wow.  Just Wow.  Amazing that it took a huge drop in the player base to get them to realize this many months later.  Guess voting with your dollars really does work.

 

"we are particularly sensitive to making a fair move for players who have invested in buying them"  So?  No wipe?  *sigh*  Are they also going to be particularly sensitive to all the other exploits, mistakes, giveaways, etc. that have happened?  Just wipe and level set the game after fixing schematics (like need to buy them once - once in your private database you can just clone them.  Ideally, allow them to be researched or discovered and perhaps licensed.  e.g.  A Master schematic can be copied, a copy can only be used in one machine.)

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11 minutes ago, ZeroPainZeroGain said:

Very interested in the mining changes, running the largest meganode supply chain in DU we would like to know what the future holds for our 100+ members who scan, mine and provide ore to the market.

 

Are meganodes being removed, and below surface mining as well.

 

The passive mining is great and for a group with a large volume of claimed hexes we are deighted to gain ore passively but this sounds like it will come at a cost of our miners and miners from all around the DU universe. 

 

More info would be much appreciated before you alter/remove one of the things that makes DU unique. 

 

 

 

I actually think its a good change.  Currently its far too safe with warp here and passive mining units will help everyone even if they are in an org or not.  Most just mine for Quanta more than using the ore for something.  Maybe they may also reduce safe zones to shake it up a bit who knows!

 

Honvik

Premier of the Empire

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I mean everything sounds good, except for one small part. 

 

We're delaying atmo pvp/territory warfare again?

 

First it was gonna be the first big thing in 2021. Then it was gonna be after the pvp revamp. Now its gonna be after space territory warfare? There is no risk for players if they can just keep warping from safe zone to safe zone. Hopefully space territories have good bonuses or it won't be worth it to hold them for more than a few days at best.

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This is the game post I was hoping for in the beginning, the steps laid out sound fantastic and I am very excited to see some of the grind and monotony removed in favour of active and engaging gameplay.

 

I am also very hopeful that the rocket engines will see a rebalance to make them more balanced for their cost as part of the element development since right now they are about 2% as efficient as stacking large atmo engines for the same power values.

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17 minutes ago, Noddles said:

Now its gonna be after space territory warfare?

 

Frankly, that was the one thing I thought made sense for NQ to amend from the original plans in this blogpost.

 

Territory warfare will be very complex to do and NQ needs to get that right or at least pretty much right from the get go in a live service game. Inserting a cycle to test the core mechanics on space based "territory" (which I guess will be space stations) seems to me to be a sensible compromise as it's probably easier to "fix" any issues in a relatively isolated setting like that.

 

I get that there's many trigger happy players but I also expect NQ needs to minimize the risk of running into big issues with many variables that can cause it to go wrong. In the end combat PVP is supposed/expected to serve a purpose and not be a goal in itself in the context of the game so this seems like a sensible step to me.

 

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I mean tbh automated mining instantly gives you my vote! love the idea of new players being given a leg up as well i think that's a very positive step to help people on their DU journey starter setups etc i think is an excellent idea . Now as for space pvp if that post is suggesting that space is say sectors or whatever and in each one the materials have a range of rarity and a reason to hold said sectors or nebulas i think that is gonna be excellent i love that idea. And please keep this general comms coming i for one am enjoying it keep it up NQ.

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