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Let’s solve the wipe issue for NQ


CoyoteNZ

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This isn’t for now, this is to generate ideas for further down the line.

 

There are arguments for and there are arguments against a wipe.

 

Rather than having a wipe, I think NQ needs to get creative with a solution. But they are pretty busy so let’s get creative for them.

 

The object of this post is to determine reasons why a wipe is needed, and work out solutions for them which don’t require a wipe but don’t go breaking a bunch of promises which were already given.

 

So firstly why try to avoid a wipe in the first place?

 - A promise. We were promised no wipe once beta started. We were promised if our subscription expired that when we came back all out stuff would still be there. People have put hundreds, or more, hours into some fantastic designs, buildings, etc.. The player base is pretty small right now, and while a wipe may make it easier for new players it would cause a lot of current players to rage quit. Plus let’s face it, a lot of the reasons for a wipe are just gong to happen again and again if not addressed anyhow, and we can’t have a wipe every couple of years so the issues need to be addressed in game. 

 

So I’ll start with a few reasons I think a wipe is needed, then give a few solutions for those reasons...

 

Dead hex’s everywhere!

- Try to get a hex near a market, good luck, try to get a nice beach front hex, good luck. If all these hex’s were actually being used, and building etc., it would be amazing. But sadly huge amounts of them are either claimed by players who no longer play and may never come back, or claimed by people just banking them.

 

My solution,

- We were promised if we left and came back we’d still have our stuff. I’d be very upset if I heard the game was at a level I want to play so I returned to find the cool hex I claimed close to the market was gone. I propose (a lot of my suggestions have this answer) a new system with new rules. 

 

Make a new planet in a new system, but this time territory claimed has a rental cost to the ark ship. This cost is based on the cost of placing the territory claim unit. The more you have, the costlier it gets. Sure some people will have plenty of money and pay ages ahead, but that’s ok. When the money paid on a unit expires, the unit is shut down and collected by the ark ship. All static constructs on the hex are now considered abandoned. Something like this is going to have to happen if the game survives as there will always be players coming and players going. But let’s not be mean and take back all the claimed land on the current system they promised would still be there’s when they returned, let’s have the new system have this issue worked out in advanced. Let’s admit it, with no rent and passive income from hex’s arriving with automining, sooner or later the majority of the current system will get claimed. That’s ok. The people who supported the game through beta will have a little passive income as long as they are willing to showboat between systems every few months to empty all there collection box’s.

 

Tunnels everywhere are killing NQ database and bandwidth

 

Really should have seen this coming, but were not here to blame, were here to help.

 

My solution 

- once again a new system. But the new system has no ore you can find by mining. There are only three ways of finding ore, surface gathering, automining units and underground mining of asteroids or passing rocks. They show up, sometimes in the safe zone, sometimes in the PvP zone. They stick around for a while, then they are gone. It’s great, lots of holes made, but once they are gone the database can once again forget about them for ever. Naturally have balancing, less megas and lower tier ores (generally but not always) on the ones in PvP zones more megas, higher tier ores normally.

 

Yes we will still have tunnels all over the current system, but as the current system starts filling up with hex’s just claimed to place a autominer on, or from people who have left the game, people will slowly migrate to the new system. Heck have new players start there. As less people use the old system there will be less strain as the tunnel laden planets won’t be accessed as much.

 

The devs have new planet generation tech they want to deploy 

We hear they have new generation methods. But you can’t really respectively place them on a current planet without really wiping it first. Once again, leave the old planets on the current system, deploy the new tech on the new system. Start smaller with less planets, and when they have new tech again, deploy a new planet or moon which is discovered. Tech will always be advancing, give them a way of using it without killing the current stuff. 

 

We we are running out of megas/ore

are we?

Yes or no, the answer is simple and already in the works, asteroids mining. Simple. 

 

The market bots ruin everything

Some love them, some hate them. But leave them here, but in the new system don’t have any NQ markets. Have all markets be player markets. No bots allowed. If you really want to sell toma got, pack up a huge ship, and slow boat it back to the old system, be in 10,000SU away or ten million. The choice is there for those who want to use them still. But let the actual player driven market determine the prices in the new system. We will have daily allowance and autominers to help start the economy. 

 

Some players used exploits and got mega rich

Darn wish I had got in on that, but I’m poor ?.

Is this actually a huge issue? In the short term yes they have a huge advantage, but over time there are always going to be players who spend all day playing, or orgs which are very well organised who are going to be way ahead of other players. It’s life. These people should have been dealt with at the time, but they weren’t. They got a huge jump, but over time we’ll catch up. I don’t have a good solution for this issue myself. Maybe somebody else does, maybe it’s a yip, we’ll just take that one on the chin and keep going, new player is always going to be disadvantaged to a long term player. Casual is always going to be at a disadvantage vs hardcore. It’s just NQs job that new, old, casual and hardcore get enjoyment.

 

Conclusion 

There are many reasons why NQ may eventually feel a wipe is needed. Let’s not use this thread to bash them, there are plenty others already doing that. This thread is to seek issues and offer workarounds.

 

-if you have a reason you think a wipe is necessary please post it, don’t feel like you have to have an answer

-If you have a answer, or different answer to one of the issues, please feel free to post it. Don’t post that somebodies idea is stupid, but if you have a different one post it instead.

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its obvious they used some kind of script to populate all the nodes when they generated the planets. So there has to be some kind of script that they already have that they can use. Its just that their concept of finite resources kills this game for a vast majority of people since you can spend days or weeks for a handful of mats you need to progress but cant because large orgs have pretty much tile scanned this game long before they ever got here. The only thing holding them back is rescanning periodically to update their grip on what is left. It was a stupid idea when it was concieved and the 1k players that still play this game for whatever reason are a testimate to how stupid is is.

 

NQ really needs to consider either doing a full pass on generating ore under the 1km surface layer down to the core for starters to rejuvinate this game. But not only that it should contain larger deposits of what is abundant for that planet but still spawning random nodes of all tier ores on every moon and planet to loosen the grip of large orgs and allow any size org to actually continue to progress or that you could potentially work a tile for months or years if depth made for more dense ore nodes to where even if it looks like a 1kl node it could still produce 10kl+ or that larger T1 nodes could have the same swing as a T5 node in time for more per grab.

 

After that NQ needs to make a script that resets random tiles and dirt to its pristine condition per maintenence/patch to take out all the faces and jagged holes which create lag to some degree. They could reset like 25 tiles in some kind of area that are un-owned with an earthquake persay without respawning resources.

 

For the resources they really should tie the respawns into the mission system for various materials that send people to some respawned area based on game generated missions in addition to the player generated ones. They could also add random ruins or alien bases or those gems they spoke of a long time ago.

 

Not all the caves are bad imo since they could be a source of content but just the amount of destruction to the landscape for a handfull of mats is the real issue here since it seems absolutely unnecessary if they would have stopped and thought about it when they were designing the game for no real purpose but permanant destruction with no function or purpose.

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The wipe argument seems to be a consistent thing in discord.  I for one hope that doesn't happen as the 1500 hours or so I have in DU would certainly make my left eye twitch!

 

I can see the postives and the negatives for a wipe but one of the defining reasons why I started during the beta was the apparent 'no more wipes'.  I would certainly feel discouraged if I had to effectively start again.

 

I agree that there are many tiles on several planets which are owned by people whom either do not play anymore or are stockpliing resources (I fall into the latter as I have TU's on virtually every planet).  There needs to be some kind of upkeep for TU's.  Either a raw quanta cost which increases based on the number of units or fuel requirements to keep them ticking over.  The latter would promote the need to actually have to go to the planets and refuel or whatever if you actually wanted to keep them.  If the fuel runs out then the tile is deemed abandoned and up for grabs along with any constructs present.

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Tile Ownership
 

I think one way to handle tile ownership is to introduce a decay mechanic to territory units. Nothing extreme that would require much time or thought, but something that requires upkeep. Such as the owner of the tile, org or player, needs to physically visit the territory unit to “recharge” the timer on it. This could be a monthly visit or longer. Maybe add a skill that would increase the timer by a %. 
 

If the player or legate from that org doesn’t visit the unit, it runs out and the territory unit becomes disabled. The tile color would change to let everyone know it’s disabled. This would mean anyone could come in and “recharge” it to claim it. Constructs on the tile become salvageable during this time. When someone else claims your disabled tile then your constructs remain salvageable by all. 
 

If no one comes to recharge it after a week of being disabled it is destroyed and tile becomes completely unclaimed. 
 

As for what would be required to “recharge” the unit, that could be a battery unit, quanta, or  possibly create a token that could be given to another player as a mission to go upkeep tiles.  

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Ore

The ore-nodes are "technically" running out in that there are currently a finite number of them and people are mining them, but at our current pace we are years from burning through all of that. I suspect that NQ will have not just released asteroids but entire other solar-systems well before our current system gets that close to running out. Effectively, this is an issue NQ is already working on and has more or less covered. 

 

Bots

I hear that this is an issue, but last I saw bots were being taken out of the market for more ore less everything other than selling fuel to players (NQ realized people don't know how to bring enough gas for a return trip and think the game is terribad for not negating their poor planning). I'd appreciate if someone could actually point me to some manner of hard proof that there are any other major bots still in the game.

 

Tunnel-Overload

The best solution I can think of for this currently would be to periodically just fill in all the tunnels/caves/cracks with a planet-appropriate dirt-voxel on un-claimed hexes (probably during weekly or monthly down-time). Lore can be earth-quakes or other forms of erosion, it wont hugely matter. Having some manner of territory-control panel that allows players that own a hex to tell the system to fill in all the holes below a certain depth as if it were an un-clamed hex would also reduce the tunnels.

 

New Players

Allowing new players to spawn on other planets would help alleviate the issues they can have finding an initial hex to mine, but as there are only 3 minable planets and a hand-full of moons in the safety-bubble of what is supposed to be the starting system, they would probably run in to that problem relatively quickly again. 

 

Upgrading the starting Scoot-Puff Jr. in to a slightly more robust craft (something with an S container and just enough power to handle a full load of hematite) would help alleviate the grind new players feel when trying to mine and then fly back and forth from the hexes they can dig. I might also suggest some manner of uber-simple ship-mounted ore detector (only sees t1, only gives yes/no to the ore's presence and not distance, ect...), as it would help them avoid hexes already cleared of easy material. 

 

It would also be beneficial if there were some other manner of collecting decent starting-funds, such as Aphelia-missions hauling small volumes of material between markets.

 

Allowing some manner of emergency-speeder access at the markets would prevent the rage-quitting that happens when a new player craters their only craft dozens of km from the alioth-respawn (say, a compactified xs hover-bike that puts the person deploying in the seat when they deploy it and permanently disappears when they exit the seat).

 

I would also advise improving the piloting tutorial to something a bit more involved than just flying a painfully slow aircraft 50km in more or less a strait line, new players often need to learn to control a flying construct well enough to taxi around before ever getting in to the air, along with landing on something that isn't runway-flat, landing and taking off in crowded areas, and circling around without cratering the craft if they can't land or take off coming or going directly to or from one area to another.

 

In regards to the tutorials, remote tutorial access would be a boon, there is too much that is too easily forgotten by new people between the lag-fest that is the current starting areas, and the areas they actually need that information in. This could be added in to a tab in the Knowledge Base (f1) section, perhaps with transcripts and pictures under each tutorial for if the player is only interested in remembering "that one part" in the middle they've forgotten.

 

Dead Hexes

In addition to the reasons given above, I do expect some portion of hexes clamed were picked up with the expectations of things like "being a land-lord", needing a defensive buffer for territory warfare (that NQ didn't announce wouldn't be on the planets we currently have until well after people had been building for it), or just for "keeping those darn'd starting-speeders of my lawn". 

 

A good deal of them probably belong to inactive accounts, and NQ's promise to let people come back with all their stuff still there puts a wrench in things. My only guess in this area would be an incentive to pick them back up, and then perhaps working the freshly placed ones in to the power-system some how when that gets implemented (perhaps they require fuel or fresh-batteries, with a list detailing their locations and "remaining charge" accessible like the constructs tab in the map.

 

I can't advise making constructs in an un-owned tile become themselves unowned, as this would just result in people scavenging the valuable bits and leaving the lower-value components to continue taking up server-resources without any incentive for anyone (including the owner) to come clean up the rest of it. Better to have it stay on someone's lists if it isn't blown up. There was as I recall also some manner of plan to involve "stealth building" where in someone would drop a TCU in a pvp area just long enough to get a core down before picking it up again so that the claimed hex wasn't broadcasting to the whole universe "shoot here".

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