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If you became CEO of Novaquark tomorrow, what would you do?


Shaman

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What would you do if you became CEO of NQ, and what would you do with DU?

Just for the sake of simplicity, features not put on the PTS/live server yet haven't started development when you gain control.

 

Personally, I would (and I know that I have said this a million times already) : 

  • add different max speeds for construct sizes
  • add xl engines, xs space tanks, etc
  • add different lock ranges for construct sizes back
  • nerf the damage L ships deal
  • reduce the speed of ships that are in pvp
  • make repair units able to repair the lives of elements not destroyed yet (>0 lives left)
  • add alt-repair that allows you to salvage broken elements for parts/ materials/ (and rarely) schematics
  • make completely destroyed elements invisible
  • remove the need for schematics for components that are already available in the crafting menu
  • add a planet with loads of t4+t5, extreme gravity, reduced pvp range and no safezones, markets or territories just for the lols
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5 hours ago, Shaman said:

 

  • add a planet with loads of t4+t5, extreme gravity, reduced pvp range and no safezones, markets or territories just for the lols

i like this, but you would need to make the surface 10,000 below sea level to make it harder for AGGs

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I would open up and tell all the remaining followers exactly what we were thinking, what our truthful current condition was, a realistic and honest roadmap of the game's future and a spanking great big apology for being so clandestine for so long.

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Take it back to alpha.  Announce that there will be a wipe sometime between now and release and a new beta cycle.  Go away and make the tough, core decisions about what sort of game this will be instead of tinkering around the edges (in the last company I worked for we referred to what NQ are releasing at the moment as 'rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic').  Decide what the main gameplay loops will be, how they will interact, how they will balance with each other.  Set limits on everything (it's an MMO) so no more unlimited production and sell/buy orders.  Work out what place PvP will have in the game, which gameplay loops it will interact with and how.  Which areas will be 'safe', what does 'safe' actually mean?  What about griefing, scamming and other types of unusual player-created content directions?  How will resources like territory get reclaimed from players who leave the game?  How does 'all ships are materialised all the time' square with the market junk problems?  There are a lot of these decisions to make.  What about the survival type of gameplay?  Bootstrapping from nothing during the alpha by mining, making more things, using them to mine more, etc then trying to get into space was one of the most fun parts of the game for me so far and it's a shame it was trashed with the schematic addition.

Then try them out in an alpha where it's possible to make disruptive changes without upsetting the players.  Get the balance right.  Make sure there's enough there to entertain people and that the game is balanced with multiple possible roles which don't crowd each other out or invalidate each other.  Get rid of the bot orders and schematics and let the players make or ignore the markets as they like.  Then wipe it all and let civilisations emerge.

 

And I'd add some pink furry dice to hang in the cockpit of everyone's ships!

 

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1 hour ago, sHuRuLuNi said:

Just one thing: #MEGA.

 

(Make Exploration Great Again).


But how?
Without NPCs, or even NPC buildings without any avatars around, what is there to explore? More land? With more ore in scanner range?

For exploration to be cool, something new or unexpected needs to be hidden from plain view and found with exploration.
But the game has zero support for this...

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26 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:


But how?
Without NPCs, or even NPC buildings without any avatars around, what is there to explore? More land? With more ore in scanner range?

For exploration to be cool, something new or unexpected needs to be hidden from plain view and found with exploration.
But the game has zero support for this...

 

 

Exactly, mystery, remnants of alien civilizations, ruins, NPCs, all that ... so that you automatically have this drive to explore planets and unique sites.

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1.) Vastly simplify the game in terms of learning curve to actually make it playable. 

2.) Remove the passive skill system. The point of a skill system is to create a set objective for players to actively accomplish. A passive skill system does not serve the purpose of active in-game content designed for players to get engaged. 

3.) Wipe the game completely prior to release and inform the public of this decision ASAP. 

4.) Add a text-based chat system in the form of chat bubble into the game which is vital for facilitating in-game social interaction.

5.) Make raw resources renewable in their natural environment similar to a mining node in Runescape. If you don't do this, we will be forced to spend all our time extracting the limited available resources on an onrush making this a mining simulator as it is right now. 

6.) Remove the schematic system. 

7.) Get rid of the market bot and let players trade using the 4 basic ores (coal, hematite, bauxite, silicon) as the currency itself. These things actually have tangible value. The problem with this is it is cumbersome as one has to carry these ores. This is why I keep saying to use a representative money. You exchange these ores on an NPC for representative money and anyone can withdraw the ores back from an NPC using the representative money that they have in hand. 

8.) Remove the "ayuda" (financial assistance) in this game in the form of daily log-in reward per account which devaluates work. 

9.) An economy is driven with consumption. Introduce consumption mechanics to the game otherwise people will not trade hands. Right now, the game has no economic engine. Runescape is a sandbox MMO with developed active skill system, in-game quest system, and a wilderness area to PVP while this game is a sandbox MMO with nothing else. Why do you need resources if there is no end goal but to mine for more resources? The game has no vertical and horizontal PVE progression unlike Runescape! 

10.) The point of larger constructs is to accommodate larger capacity. Think of an Airbus A380 with 1000 seats, double-decked 747, long Boeing 777 300-series being used privately by few individuals. The constructs have too much capacity for their use! People in this game are thinking too big! Nobody in this game uses smaller cores! 

 

This game is very ambitious. I really like the ideas this game have but it's poorly implemented and so the game doesn't work. If you have played MMOs like Runescape, the game is bustling with activity individually and socially because there are activities to do as the game have a developed PVE. This game failed to replicate that.

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4 hours ago, Eternal said:

1.) Vastly simplify the game in terms of learning curve to actually make it playable. 

 

Srsly, what? I run this game on a pc at my culture school and there is an 11 year old kid who enjoys playing it... (Yes I have 3 accounts and have only allocate 4 alts for myself and my org, so I just let my students play on another unused alt.


I think he took all of about 30 minutes to figure out what was going on and get his speeder into space.

 
Except for Lua and arcane voxelmancy techniques, this game is already laughably simplistic to the point of cartoonish caricature.

 

select and shoot combat. zero flying skill needed.

airbrakes that can stop a bus on a dime, ridiculous compactification of assets into tiny containers precluding the need for large ships. 

Ship construction that doesn't take into consideration placement of elements in all but the most rudimentary way. Zero acceleration or stress limits.

Stupid aerodynamics implementation.

 

stupid, zero skill scanning mechanic. just have to wait  with zero gameplay for 15 minutes...

simple skills needed for mining that can be learnt in an hour.

zero late game progression for characters or orgs.

 

Tech tree? What tech tree?

Research new tech? Nope.

complex crafting formulae? nope.
Passive "skill" gains without effort or regardless of effort, for that matter... basically zero skill.

 

No free markets... bots everywhere

 

No asset maintenance or depreciation/wear other than fuel consumption and PvP.

zero survival oxygen/food mechanics or consumption.


stupid tile ownership mechanics that require no skill to manage, just create chains of sub-orgs and plonk down hundreds of TUs at low cost.

again, zero maintenance of owned territories required. basically fire and forget.


This entire game is designed as a lowest common denominator in terms of skill required to play and you want to simplify the learning curve?
The only thing difficult about is having a constitution tough enough to wait out all the time gates and persevere through the boring play loops, since this is a monthly sub game, each hour wasted waiting or performing monotonous, skill-free tasks is another few cents in NQs pocket for  zero joy earned.

 

--- edit: 

I forgot about the RDMS... that IS a full fat feature implemented with more depth than I imagined and is tricky to get right... isn't it NQ? (remember the MP15 debacle...)

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6 hours ago, GraXXoR said:

Srsly, what?

I give you that the game is not impossible to play. 

But a lot of things in this game are not intuitive. 

 

Ore scanner pinging every X meters walked is not intuitive. 

 

Modifying your speeder (moving parts, lua)  is not intuitive. 

 

How linked container works with quick access bar is not intuitive. 

 

The different crafting batch size and the temporary disappearance of ingredients during crafting is not intuitive. 

 

 

 

We are a community and there will allways be someone in chat to give new players a hand. 

 

But imagine playing this game without anyone to ask questions? 

It would be a pain. 

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1. Work on my CV trying to work out how to explain my time at NQ without mentioning it as I may need it soon

 

2. Take every bit of left over budget from every department and sink it all into a good PR company to come up with a way to sell this as a viable product to investors to get a new rush of cash for development as there isn’t enough subs in its current state to fund development, possibly even servers

 

3. Get rid of no industry on dynamic core decision

 

4. Get rid of current space speed limit, but make the acceleration curve non linear requiring more force the faster you go

 

5. Voxel damage for non PvP crashes. It’s stupid that every element on my ship can get destroyed but the structure doesn’t take a scratch

 

5. Fix the darn repair units so you can feed scrap and repair elements, not just destroy repairable elements

 

6. Get rid of deep mining on all permanent planets as they are just making stupid holes which only ever get used once. Instead have comets which drift in from a long way away, travel through local space, some times clipping safe space sometimes not, and then keep heading off I to outer space and disappear once nobody is near them again

 

7. Try to fix the rendering so it renders the outside of constructs first so you have something to look at and less likely to hit it. Why render all the intervals before the externals for lords sake!

 

8. Have a serious sit down with all the developers, work out what is really realistic with the technology and try to determine the most fun PvP system possible with those limitations

 

run out of time, not a CEO so back to work ?

 

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So if I became CEO of this company, I would SELL this project to a game company that knows what they are doing, and watch them develop the game. Try to recoup some of the money that was spent. The engine is worth something I'm sure. 

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15 hours ago, joaocordeiro said:

I give you that the game is not impossible to play. 

But a lot of things in this game are not intuitive. 

 

Ore scanner pinging every X meters walked is not intuitive. 

 

Modifying your speeder (moving parts, lua)  is not intuitive. 

 

How linked container works with quick access bar is not intuitive. 

 

The different crafting batch size and the temporary disappearance of ingredients during crafting is not intuitive. 

 

 

 

We are a community and there will allways be someone in chat to give new players a hand. 

 

But imagine playing this game without anyone to ask questions? 

It would be a pain. 

 

It took me a couple of hours to learn how to mine super efficiently but only took me about 10 minutes to realise how the mining system worked. It was pretty damn obvious. 
 

and when I played this game during the very first alpha I immediately and quite naturally shifted the vertical stabilizer on my hover horizontal just to see what would happen and was amazed the thing actually flew. I thought it might have been a bug and that I was cheating lol. 

There were no YouTube videos back then and I didnt join the forums until later.

 

you really don’t give players enough credit for being ingenious. 

 

none of the examples you gave are even about difficulty. They are just about lack of tutorial / questionable UI or bugs. A 10 minute YouTube video would remedy most, if not all your quibbles above. A 30 minute tutorial would even go as far as basic ship design principles. 
 

unintuitive and difficult/stew learning curve are not the same thing. 
 

This game could be basically taught in 30 minutes.  That is not a deep game. 
 

elite dangerous is about the same. 
 

NMS / star citizen / cities skylines hell, even sim city 4 take longer to explain the mechanics and what you can / should do as a player. (Ok, NMS has walkthrough tutorials and learning play modes to hand hold you, so that’s a bit different, I’ll admit) 
 

I stand by my comment: beyond LUA and RDMS, this game has a very shallow  learning curve and as a sandbox that was touted for being designed by a “scientist with a PhD” aimed at realism, is almost cartoonish in its over simplification of many systems. 
 

 

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I'd invest in development and scale the company down.

 

I'd close one of their two offices. I'd let anyone go that isn't directly related to development and hire two people in their place: a UI/UX designer and an experienced game designer. I'd challenge tech to grow their team, improve their pace, and implement better accountability on developer time (because it feels like they are demoralized, misallocated, or just straight-up sandbagging).

 

As CEO, I would not lead the game design effort -- a game like this needs a dedicated, experienced designer and not a CEO-as-a-designer like they've had. CEO is not lead game designer. 

 

I would look into real analytics to understand my demographics -- how many people are playing, what they do when they play, why and when they churn...

 

I'd push for major design refactors that drastically reduce the scope of the game because it is still way too ambitious. Fix and improve the things that work, everything else should be scrapped and reconsidered, including PvP. Make these choices based on the data, not the gut. 

 

Overall? I'd focus on changes to the company itself first...IMO, nothing will change if I showed up as CEO with a list of design changes alone. Still will have slow dev, wasted money with two offices, and no true design lead. 

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Make the launcher compatible with OS other than windows 10 again. Or simply revert back to old launcher. Or even just give people the option with what launcher to use. 
Game currently runs perfectly well on Windows 7 systems, but that has been prohibited after the launcher update. Even the swap over to the new launcher originally was still viable as you could get it to work after manually installing web view - but after it's third or forth update, it just refuses to run at all. 
 

I just find it really really odd that NQ would deliberately remove the ability of a chunk of people to play their game, which otherwise runs perfectly fine and without issues, through what at this point looks like deliberate effort. Like a developer had to go through the trouble of creating something that specifically doesn't work on a portion of the systems, then when people got it working "updated" it to definitely not work. Just very very odd business model in my humble opinion but eh, what would I know?

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If you became CEO of Novaquark tomorrow, what would you do?

I would not, but if it was forced by circumstances then I would start putting out feelers for another job..

 

The problems at NQ are many, fundamental and deeply rooted. And would require a CEO that is pragmatic and extremely hands-on to solve. And there is no indication that there is someone like that in charge.

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I wanted to say Run.

But well, if the question is about how to change DU:

-Change Buildboxes so there is no more box but add maximum PCU per Core

-revert most limitations

-add a way to build infrastructure with voxels only, coreless

-larger cores, 1,2,4 km to start with

-introduce the market teleports to All markets and districts, add shuttles to all outer planets (fee for all shuttles)

-introduce organizational superstructure that makes it possible to have many organizations under an alliance banner, cores placed for the alliance will count towards the alliance members org and the superstructure cannot place cores itself

-Reintroduce the community page

-add member levels, having superlegates and legates is just not enough in a hyrarchy, 5 ranks

-Give chars the possibility to mariage ingame, building community

-Docking 100% failsafe

-MergeCores: Cores that can be added within the building zone of another core with the means to: cargo units/rented rooms/shops in cities/rented dock/any reason you can think of that you need a seperate space within a structure that you can give rights to another player for either free or periodic cash

 

The too creative section:

-Sheep, just because, sheep.  Fluffy

-Ooh and character adjustments on genetic build (add more distinctiveness to roleplay and possible lore so add possibility for lets say tails, longer ears, be creative)

-cloaking and shields

 

Ill stop here

 

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On 6/19/2021 at 4:22 PM, Shaman said:

What would you do if you became CEO of NQ, and what would you do with DU?

 

I would silently cry into my pillow. When I manage to pick up courage I would ask the developers what they have and how to turn it into something that has a chance on the market. That's not what I want as a player but what the investors expect from a CEO. If that is successful enough for a return of investment there might be a chance to get additional funding for a second attempt to realise DU (many years in the future and with new technology).

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