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


NQ-Naerais

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I'm very happy with what I read! You are taking the game in the right direction.

 

But I still would like to know one detail: is NQ financially safe? Can we sleep assured that the game will live to see all of that fulfilled?

 

Thanks.

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This is the encouraging part. I'm ok with no planetary PVP anytime soon because I do understand that the the game is being developed on a shoestring budget. I'm happy to hear about mining units. I'm happy to hear about rare resources in the PVP zone. I'm ok with there being absolutely no mention of NPCs, because I would be quite satisfied if the things in this blog were delivered. I'm particularly happy to hear about second thoughts about .23 industry. ?This whole blog makes me feel quite a bit better about things.

 

Overall this then comes down to execution. Can you feed us enough content while you spin up and finalize your back end server stuff? Or is this a, "Come back in a year when its finished cooking," situation?

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Nice work communicating with us, this is exactly what we asked for.  Some people are still mad apparently, I'm not sure what it is they want now, but this layout of the planning and design decisions of the team is great.  Looking forward to giving more targeted feedback as these new things hit PTS (still waiting for screens...)

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Overall good, realistic. Likely meaning new Roadmap and 2022 release.

 

Still, as I said before in Discord, we badly needed such clarity 2 years ago (this why in terms of disign direction this time feels wasted), then now we all be in bit better spot. But better late then never, right.

 

Looks like JC "retirement" was beneficial thing for process.

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When it comes to Asteroid mining, a few questions

  • Will this be done by hand or by mining unit, or future technologies such as ship mining lasers? if mining unit, will it be a static construct or something to build onto a dynamic construct (a ship)
  • Will the asteroids be a renewable asset, meaning will new ones be introduced over time as old ones become depleted? 
  • Are players going to be able to build bases on asteroids if they are not deleted over time after resources are depleted from them?
  • are they going to be static constructs or something that can be moved by players in anyway?
  • Will there be player events for any asteroids that are "Super, mega rare" that will be kind of announced so there is defiantly a PVP trigger there?
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So I'm not too sure why there continues to be a push to increase the graphics in game.  First of all, they are beautiful.  Top notch.  Second of all, has anyone ever said, "Man, DU has so much to do, and I really love it, but this texture mapping has me wanting to quit." Or, "Man, DU seems like a lot of fun, at a really good price, but until they improve the 3D models, I'm not buying it"?  Every hour spent by an employee working on increasing the graphics instead of adding additional content is an absolute waste, and will do nothing to improve the player experience, or player numbers.

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Just now, Redlight said:

So I'm not too sure why there continues to be a push to increase the graphics in game.  First of all, they are beautiful.  Top notch.  Second of all, has anyone ever said, "Man, DU has so much to do, and I really love it, but this texture mapping has me wanting to quit." Or, "Man, DU seems like a lot of fun, at a really good price, but until they improve the 3D models, I'm not buying it"?  Every hour spent by an employee working on increasing the graphics instead of adding additional content is an absolute waste, and will do nothing to improve the player experience, or player numbers.

You do know artists and modelers can't game balance or create new systems right? Those are very different skill sets. 

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> Once discovered, there will be a delay before their location is broadcast to all players

 

No, just no. Don't take away content, we don't play the game to let it play itself. Instead, give us tools to scan for ships etc. Continue looking at how Eve has done it an take inspiration from there.

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1 minute ago, Noddles said:

You do know artists and modelers can't game balance or create new systems right? Those are very different skill sets. 

Then perhaps their team is made up of the wrong composition of employees.  Hire more programmers instead, and if a year or two they want to increase the design, then hire some back on contract.  That human resource $$$ could be better spent elsewhere.

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1 minute ago, Redlight said:

Then perhaps their team is made up of the wrong composition of employees.  Hire more programmers instead, and if a year or two they want to increase the design, then hire some back on contract.  That human resource $$$ could be better spent elsewhere.

Theyre a french company. One does not simply just let employees go at will in a  french company. 

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2 minutes ago, Redlight said:

Then perhaps their team is made up of the wrong composition of employees.  Hire more programmers instead

 

More programmers will not mean faster development time. In almost any MMO style game the vast majority of devs is in the graphics/modelling/VFX/sound teams. as that is _way_ more labor intensive and needs more different skillsets to get done.

What I feel is lacking in NQ is how the programmers are instructed to work and likely that hey are tasked to do things like UI /UX work they will generally not have the skillset for.

 

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2 minutes ago, Noddles said:

Theyre a french company. One does not simply just let employees go at will in a  french company. 

So do you actually disagree with anything I said, or do you just feel compelled to comment?  Would you agree that the graphics are good, and that limited money from a small subscriber base would be better utilized elsewhere?

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25 minutes ago, Redlight said:

So do you actually disagree with anything I said, or do you just feel compelled to comment?  Would you agree that the graphics are good, and that limited money from a small subscriber base would be better utilized elsewhere?

I don't think giving them more programmers would solve anything. This is a failure of management not a failure of talent. 

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Be interested to see how exactly asteriods are going to spawn in pvp space. Will it be in asteroid belts? If so what's to stop pvpers from just blockading the asteroid belts and shooting anything that moves. I'd say that radars would also need addressing as early tier players who need some high level ore aren't going to have the same access to a super high level Large Radar that most pirates are using.

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2 hours ago, blazemonger said:

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

True. But is there a point here? 

Dont we all know the game is not currently viable? 

It is assumed the project is rebooting with this new managment and reboots take time. 

 

From the player perspective, was there a choice? Do we want to play a non viable game? 

 

The only thing worth asking is:

What about the investors and funds? Havr the investors agreed with a new round of funding and the extended time needed to fix this game? 

 

If yes. Then im quite happy with it. 

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Forget about any complex designs you might have for automated miners, the clear solution is to just make Rock Roombas that vacuum up all the infinitely respawning ores on the surface. Mechanically identical to whatever you were planning, but much more entertaining than some bog-standard drill on a tripod.

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30 minutes ago, Floridaskye said:

Be interested to see how exactly asteriods are going to spawn in pvp space. Will it be in asteroid belts? If so what's to stop pvpers from just blockading the asteroid belts and shooting anything that moves. I'd say that radars would also need addressing as early tier players who need some high level ore aren't going to have the same access to a super high level Large Radar that most pirates are using.

 

You can't really inverse-ninja and MMO, any buff you give to single newer players is going to end up in the hands of older and more experienced players in large factions. More to the point, radars are for sale on the market (and they all have the same max detection range), ore is for sale on the market, and anyone can fly to any planet and go mining for the stuff they need in a safe zone. If I had to guess by the sound of it the asteroids will just be "mega-nodes in space". 

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1 hour ago, Noddles said:

I don't think giving them more programmers would solve anything. This is a failure of management not a failure of talent. 

Sure, management failure to date. But increasing the size of the team, well managed, will increase throughput and would accelerate delivery of new features. 

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50 minutes ago, Lethys said:

So.....the overall picture is painted now.

 

On to the details with many  more blogs and explaining how you envision certain mechanics in detail 

Yeah really hoping the following blog posts arent just about new systems but how they view old systems fitting into the ecosystem. Its alot easier to make suggestions if we all start from the same understanding. 

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Not sure exactly how they are finding the fun. 

 

Surface mining is currently tedious as hell, and an  ugly blight on the planet) that feels like a mobile mini-game without the game part.  Nearly featureless ground spammed with a sea of various colored rocks you have to click on, with no creatures or threats of any kind.  Doubling down on that seems an odd choice unless you completely rework how it is done, and not simply making it more lucrative. It is currently a gameplay loop nobody wants or uses beyond the first few hours.

 

Ground mining is tedious as hell and feels like the first couple of hours of Space Engineers... before you build cool machines to help you mine and start having fun.  Your fix is to... plop down an auto-mining machine?  This will give us easier Quanta, but kinda makes one of the few gameplay loops in the game redundant.  Why not make it fun instead of automatic?  So we will have automatic leveling, automatic mining, where is the draw to play?  Where is the fun?

 

Asteroid Mining is new, so I have no idea of the mechanics.  But IF it is just the ground mining moved to an asteroid then there will be no net gain for miners. It could be good for PVP, assuming the risk is worth the reward, but that is a tough balance to achieve, as too little value and people won't do it, and too much value and the economy will be flooded by off-hours miners and/or dominated by orgs who simply have sheer number advantage to insta-delete any threats. There is at least potential with this one.  

 

PVP... Not my thing so I don't have too much to say. While I like Arena PVP combat (or other skill based PVP), most open world PvP is actually PvV (Players vs Victim), which doesn't interest me, though some people love ganking so this might add some fun for them.

 

The graphics definitely do need an update but is really the least of this games issues.  So meh?

 

Overall, I don't see many additions of fun for most players.  Slightly less tedium due to easier quanta, but not much in the way of actually adding fun (Asteroid mining mechanics being an unknown).  PVP is really the only thing I see getting a possible fun boost, but PVP is one of the hardest things for an Indie game to sustain.  Most Indie PVP fails hard because there is a minimum active population required otherwise it simply dies.  Something indie games with smaller player bases struggle with.

 

Overall nothing really bad, but nothing all that impressive either.

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