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Why Does NQ scare away new players?


Xsarec

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I know this is beta and not a finished game but when you look at places like MMORPG.com and they call the game a junkyard simulator it is not good. I have tried to bring people into the game but right from the moment they get the tutorial done they hate it because you go out the door to garbage everywhere and lag like hell, you go to a market place and garbage everywhere and you lag like hell.  So most of the people laugh and quit the game as nothing more than a joke.

 

So why not clean it up and keep the trade hubs clear. I cannot believe adding a timer on how long your ship or stuff stays before impounded or sent to your inventory or even a temp inventory would be that hard to create.

 

I just think that if more people played, you have more revenue coming in and that helps the game...just my opinion.

 

All the people I got to stay past the garbage love the game and can't wait for more content, some that are not playing are still paying to burn skills.

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This is probably one of the, if not he top issue voiced around here.

 

Unfortunately NQ is dead silent on this and has not shown any interest in addressing the issue beyond silly changes like making the available surface area bigger which only led to more junk being spread in a wider area. Not that we told them this would happen...

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2 hours ago, Xsarec said:

I know this is beta and not a finished game but when you look at places like MMORPG.com and they call the game a junkyard simulator it is not good. I have tried to bring people into the game but right from the moment they get the tutorial done they hate it because you go out the door to garbage everywhere and lag like hell, you go to a market place and garbage everywhere and you lag like hell.  So most of the people laugh and quit the game as nothing more than a joke.

 

So why not clean it up and keep the trade hubs clear. I cannot believe adding a timer on how long your ship or stuff stays before impounded or sent to your inventory or even a temp inventory would be that hard to create.

 

I just think that if more people played, you have more revenue coming in and that helps the game...just my opinion.

 

All the people I got to stay past the garbage love the game and can't wait for more content, some that are not playing are still paying to burn skills.

Agreed, they need to remove it, my current pc struggles hard in those areas, to the point where I don't want to go near those areas (that's when I bother to log in).

Thing is, this isn't going to fix the issue of scaring new players away, sure for the first few weeks it is a novelty but once you hit the brick wall which are schematics and the realisation that you are literally paying to click on ore 99 percent of your time as a newbie it is enough to turn most people away.

 

The unfortunate and inescapable fact is that this game isn't as fun as it needs to be (read: it is a grind that belongs in the 90s) and even if players do get passed that the economy isn't exactly booming and mining as it currently is isn't fun, sure at the beginning you couldn't go too far without finding a nice mega but that is becoming increasingly harder making the barrier to entry for the main play loop (building stuff) hard to achieve for someone that doesn't want to spend actual days mining.

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The new player experience is among the worst in any MMO...

  • First, the "magic" of a single shard system evaporates quickly, either because of parking lot lag or because you're trying to start with a friend and end up in different starting areas. It feels no different than a traditional MMO (instancing), except it's harder to find each other because of the clunky teleport system. 
  • The UI...if the game is clunky, they could have at least spent some time on the UI to make it feel more polished. Instead, it looks like it was improvised by the tech team. A bad UI makes learning the game that much more annoying. 
  • The tutorial itself. Go to sanctuary and claim a hex near a market. Hah! So...fly my speeder across boring landscape and mostly derelict structures for 5-10 minutes before I can find an unclaimed hex? Great. Then it tells you to go back to the market. Oh goodie.
  • While at the laggy market, you try some more tutorials...but for some reason, NQ can't seem to make their tutorials function, so you end up stuck and even more confused unless you're lucky. 
  • After more back and forth to the market, you learn that the tutorial was basically a waste of time and you should have never left Alioth to begin with. Great.

This experience only gets worse with time...as more hexes are claimed, you're asking more and more of new players.

 

Maybe that's fine for some, but (like it or not) this is the Twitter era...people don't have patience for monotony and chores, especially in their first few minutes of a game. 

 

Perhaps more than any one design choice, DU is an example of how the nature of "hardcore" needs to evolve over time. If DU wants to be 'hardcore', it needs to be hardcore for today -- it's been 18 years since Eve Online was launched. It feels like DU belongs 18 years in the past. 

 

The reality is that the majority of gamers are under 34 (59%) and that's the demo that devotes the most time to gaming on average (by far) -- good luck scaling an MMO without that demo! Good luck attracting that demo to a game modeled off a paradigm of "hardcore" that's almost two decades out of date.

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Because people seem to think abandoned junk means populated and active.  When in fact it tells me dead game.

 

While it isn't a dead game it appears to be that way to the newer player.   Why not do any of the suggestions for clearing the junk everywhere in game?  I mean at this point I am sure most of us would be happy if NQ took any action on this subject.

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I don't have a lot of details to share just yet but we will release it in a blog when ready. 

We ARE working on a revamp to the FTUE (or First Time User Experience) to make it quicker and easier to get through so that you can get to playing or join friends faster. 

We know parking is an issue at the markets and we're working on a long term solution, for now however we only have temporary fixes. We are aware this is a major pain and are working on it.  That goes beyond just the markets but 'stuff' left laying around in general. 

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50 minutes ago, NQ-Naerais said:

 That goes beyond just the markets but 'stuff' left laying around in general. 

 

Oh, that is certain. What would be interesting to hear is what challenges NQ sees in this regard an how they view some of the solutions that have been brought up here. 

 

For me an impound system would be good. It keeps the markets with an "in use" vibe while removing the clutter that just lays around. I'm not a fan of the "squeeky clean"  way SC does it for instance where your ship get yanked of the pad in a few minutes.

 

The suggestion of impounding constructs after say 48 hours, which are then retrievable from for instance the ARK ship (for a fee) as a one time spawn in blueprint seems like a sensible approach that I would not expect has a very high dev cost or development time as it uses existing mechanics.

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4 hours ago, blazemonger said:

The suggestion of impounding constructs after say 48 hours, which are then retrievable from for instance the ARK ship (for a fee) as a one time spawn in blueprint seems like a sensible approach that I would not expect has a very high dev cost or development time as it uses existing mechanics.

Not only is it easy and fast to implement but also an effective solution. And the dev time would be an good long-term investment (for once), since if DU survives and there some day actually is a large player base. Some variant of this features is going to be REQUIRED for managing unwanted clutter and construct griefing in player owned areas.

 

But sigh.. knowing NQ they will probably come up with some unique solution that nobody else has thought off (for a reason).

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30 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

Not only is it easy and fast to implement but also an effective solution. And the dev time would be an good long-term investment (for once), since if DU survives and there some day actually is a large player base. Some variant of this features is going to be REQUIRED for managing unwanted clutter and construct griefing in player owned areas.

 

But sigh.. knowing NQ they will probably come up with some unique solution that nobody else has thought off (for a reason).

 

So there's lots of talk about this feature and about is how easy it is, but let's think about it. 

  • First, we need a way to tell if someone is parked on an NQ-owned market -- that's not likely a flag that exists today
  • You also need a firm definition of 'parked' -- does hovering just over the market count as 'parked'? Does it have to touch the market to count, or any idle ship within a market hex is affected? The "parked" bit must be stored server-side, too. 
  • Then it needs a timestamp to imprint the 'parked time'. Another server-side data construct they don't have today. 
  • What if someone climbs into their construct and moves it an inch? Ideally it is smart enough to know not to reset the timestamp...
  • It needs to query every construct with an elapsed time; it doesn't have to do this often, though (e.g. every 10 or so minutes); but could still be a lot of constructs at scale
  • It needs to push the "deconstructing" state to clients so that clients can render the ship disappearing and free the model from memory. Otherwise you'd be staring at a ship and it'd be gone server-side but still lingering client-side. It also will look very odd if they just vanish without some sort of animation or feedback. 
  • What if someone parks their ship then stays inside? Extra logic is required to eject them. 
  • On a similar note, what if someone jumps into their ship right as the countdown expires? It now has to eject them and compactify the ship...even though they were about to leave? But then how is it supposed to differentiate "about to leave" players from "just sitting in their cockpit" players...? It can't. 
  • Destroying stuff is a performance cost, too -- the timers must be tuned so that clients aren't having to constantly purge then reload models. Longer the timer, the more clutter but the less complexity with these edge cases. 

TBH, I do feel like the "timer+impounding" is an easy feature...but there's edge cases and caveats like with anything. 

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4 minutes ago, ShippyLongstalking said:

 

So there's lots of talk about this feature and about is how easy it is, but let's think about it. 

TBH, I do feel like the "timer+impounding" is an easy feature...but there's edge cases and caveats like with anything. 

  • First, we need a way to tell if someone is parked on an NQ-owned market -- that's not likely a flag that exists today>
  • You also need a firm definition of 'parked' -- does hovering just over the market count as 'parked'? Does it have to touch the market to count, or any idle ship within a market hex is affected? The "parked" bit must be stored server-side, too. 

> Already mostly implemented with the docking features

  • Then it needs a timestamp to imprint the 'parked time'. Another server-side data construct they don't have today. 

> Trivial to implement

  • What if someone climbs into their construct and moves it an inch? Ideally it is smart enough to know not to reset the timestamp...

> Many simple solutions. First that comes to mind is that once you have been marked as parked, you must travel a certain distance from the market/leave the market hex to reset the counter.

  • It needs to query every construct with an elapsed time; it doesn't have to do this often, though (e.g. every 10 or so minutes); but could still be a lot of constructs at scale

> No, this can be done much simpler. There are only three events in the game that would change the parked status.

 

1. Constructs is marked as parked, timestamped and added to a parked constructs list on the server

2. Construct leaves and is removed from the list.

3. Once a timestamp goes past the limitation in the list, do some checks and then deconstruct

 

So all the server needs to do is save a list of parked construct ID's and timestamps. And then periodically check the timestamps against the running clock. Something that would not take any resources at all. And if the list is sorted by oldest timestamps first, it would not even have to check the entire list every time, since once you come to a valid parking timestamp in the list, you know that the rest of the list is also valid.

  • It needs to push the "deconstructing" state to clients so that clients can render the ship disappearing and free the model from memory. Otherwise you'd be staring at a ship and it'd be gone server-side but still lingering client-side. It also will look very odd if they just vanish without some sort of animation or feedback. 

> Already implemented with the Alt+B compact feature.

  • What if someone parks their ship then stays inside? Extra logic is required to eject them

> This one has some merit. But I bet considering how the game is constructed, that deconstructing a ship with players inside would just leave them hanging in the air for a sec before falling to the ground. This could of course be done more elegant, but considering the rest of the game it would not be outside the norm.

  • On a similar note, what if someone jumps into their ship right as the countdown expires? It now has to eject them and compactify the ship...even though they were about to leave? But then how is it supposed to differentiate "about to leave" players from "just sitting in their cockpit" players...? It can't. 

> This would be covered by the deconstruct checks. For example if there is an active pilot in the construct when the parking timer is exceeded, the deconstruction is performed after the pilot leaves the seat, or canceled if the ship leaves.

  • Destroying stuff is a performance cost, too -- the timers must be tuned so that clients aren't having to constantly purge then reload models. Longer the timer, the more clutter but the less complexity with these edge cases. 

> Orders of magnitude less performance cost then having markets filled with abandoned constructs. And we are talking days for the parking limit, not hours and minutes.

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41 minutes ago, Revelcro said:

Better suggestion.  Once a week during prime time in russia for one hour, the market area becomes a pvp zone with a 10 minute warning.

 

This problem will sort itself out in one week.

Where is the laugh hysterically button - so true.

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4 hours ago, ShippyLongstalking said:

So there's lots of talk about this feature and about is how easy it is, but let's think about it. 

 

While I do not think this is or should be hard at all, any of the points you raise should be pretty straight forward database queries which are being run ar frequent intervals several times a day, at least once an hour.

 

The point here is that it would be great if NQ actually engaged with us on such suggestions and provide us with feedback as to why they believe something may or may not be feasible. It is well possible there are actual reasons for not choosing an option like this.

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What surprises me more than anything is that time and time again we have new players coming in the forums and clearly bemoaning the lag around the markets and the crowded junk that slows down their game. 
 

This has been going on for months and months. 
 

And yet NQ only have temporary solutions after eight months of “balpha” release.  

 

This is exactly the sort of thing that alphas were made for: removing so-called blockers that prevent normal gameplay (lag death, or even straight CTD) or strongly disincentivise the player base. 
 

The fact that NQ are aware of this clear and present new-player sink hole yet it’s not top priority (even mentioned?) on their roadmap is mind boggling to me. 

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2 hours ago, Gottchar said:

You can stop coming up with good idea.

 

Either NQ does still read topics after they commented, in which case they already read the excellenct ideas in the other topics, or they don’t.

But we don't know... Since NQ treats communications with players like marketing PR, using wish-washy wording that don't actually say anything.

In the entire history of this game, I cannot think of a single time where players have been involved until after the feature suddenly shows up in a blog and has already been implemented so that it will be released regardless of player feedback. And this is the complete opposite of what was promised during the Kickstarter campaign.

 

And if it is because NQ is worried that talking about the internal dev process and limitations in features will lead to bad PR, they don't have to worry. They already have plenty of that..

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10 hours ago, ShippyLongstalking said:
  • First, we need a way to tell if someone is parked on an NQ-owned market -- that's not likely a flag that exists today
  • You also need a firm definition of 'parked' -- does hovering just over the market count as 'parked'? Does it have to touch the market to count, or any idle ship within a market hex is affected? The "parked" bit must be stored server-side, too.

Either use docking mechanics or - more rigorous - check if the core is inside the market hex.

 

10 hours ago, ShippyLongstalking said:
  • Then it needs a timestamp to imprint the 'parked time'. Another server-side data construct they don't have today. 

That shouldn't be a problem. NQ already qualified for it by implemented a timer for the maneuvering tool.

 

10 hours ago, ShippyLongstalking said:
  • What if someone climbs into their construct and moves it an inch? Ideally it is smart enough to know not to reset the timestamp...

That depends on the first points. If the timer is based on docking, it restarts if the ship undocks and docks again. If it is based on the hex it doesn't restart until the ship exits the hex and anters it again. The latter means that even flying around within the hex wouldn't reset the timer.

 

10 hours ago, ShippyLongstalking said:
  • It needs to query every construct with an elapsed time; it doesn't have to do this often, though (e.g. every 10 or so minutes); but could still be a lot of constructs at scale

That depends on the timer duration. With 48h (for example) it would be sufficient to cycle thouth the constructs once per hour.

 

10 hours ago, ShippyLongstalking said:
  • It needs to push the "deconstructing" state to clients so that clients can render the ship disappearing and free the model from memory. Otherwise you'd be staring at a ship and it'd be gone server-side but still lingering client-side. It also will look very odd if they just vanish without some sort of animation or feedback. 
  • What if someone parks their ship then stays inside? Extra logic is required to eject them. 
  • On a similar note, what if someone jumps into their ship right as the countdown expires? It now has to eject them and compactify the ship...even though they were about to leave? But then how is it supposed to differentiate "about to leave" players from "just sitting in their cockpit" players...? It can't. 
  • Destroying stuff is a performance cost, too -- the timers must be tuned so that clients aren't having to constantly purge then reload models. Longer the timer, the more clutter but the less complexity with these edge cases. 

There is an existing relocation mechanics where all these issues are solved or at least not be game breaking. Use it to move the ships to a distant parking area or even to a deticated junk moon. Of course that would result in performance problems in the parking locations. But that's OK. It should be a pain to go there - as a punishment for littering the markets.

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There is also another "solution".  For Alioth districts :

- move all non-NQ ships and structures  from District tiles to corresponding Market tiles

- move markets back to districts. The Markets tiles will stay as junkyard parking only

- Once a week/month/?, during maintenance - move all non-NQ ships and structures from District tiles to corresponding Junkyard tiles

 

Result :

- new junkyards, Ships from junkyard could be Fetched by owners from safe distance if necessary.

- clean District Markets, connected by teleport

- better FTUE

 

 

 

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Honestly as a starting point they could begin by just packing all ships owned by someone with a non-active sub into a schematic, this is a one time free thing, do it again though and a charge is levied for you to access that schematic and place, to prevent exploitation you weigh whatever the ship weighs and you must retrieve the schematic from a market attendant from the very same market or district in which you parked.

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2 hours ago, bleakcon said:

Honestly as a starting point they could begin by just packing all ships owned by someone with a non-active sub into a schematic, this is a one time free thing

Is it even possible to do that with all ships, including the content of containers? I seem to remember that there are some limitations.

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18 minutes ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

Is it even possible to do that with all ships, including the content of containers? I seem to remember that there are some limitations.

Honestly, I have no idea, what I do know is they allow you to compact smaller ships, I don't know how their database works but they will have the information of what is in any given container so I imagine the limitation of packing anything larger than a XS is a game balance one, they don't want players being able to compact large warships and then deploy them after travelling on a small ship.

Definitely guessing here though, would assume it is possible though, admit I could and probably am missing something but they would probably be saving themselves server resource utilisation by implementing this.

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