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


Shaman

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It's interesting that many think a CEO is actually driving the feature set of the game. The CEO is first and foremost responsible for keeping the company afloat. And adding features at this point would be the last thing to achieve that. Driving the relevant teams to get the performance of the game core to a point where it can support the numbers of players needed to stay alive as a company would be what would/should concern a CEO I'd guess.

You can't build features on a core that is not able to support them.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:

It's interesting that many think a CEO is actually driving the feature set of the game.

 

Yeah the CEO wouldn't get involved with game design details unless the CEO is also the game designer. Overall I think they've been going in the right direction this year by optimizing and unraveling past mistakes before adding major content. I don't think I'd change anything other than promoting the game with gameplay footage only, no scripted scenes. And maybe more regular status updates.

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24 minutes ago, Haunty said:

 

Yeah the CEO wouldn't get involved with game design details unless the CEO is also the game designer. Overall I think they've been going in the right direction this year by optimizing and unraveling past mistakes before adding major content. I don't think I'd change anything other than promoting the game with gameplay footage only, no scripted scenes. And maybe more regular status updates.

Depends on the size of the company and the academic background of the CEO...

Small companies tend to have ppl accumulating job. And that's normal and acceptable for small companies.

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52 minutes ago, Haunty said:

Overall I think they've been going in the right direction this year by optimizing and unraveling past mistakes before adding major content.

 

I think it is more a forced exercise of cost cutting to get the expenses to a level where they can start budgeting for a possible funding round with a reasonable chance of getting to the finish line this time. a rough estimate for me would be they'll need another 10-15M, allowing them to run without revenue for another 2-3 years and being able to get he game to a point where it can handle the player numbers they need for it to become self sufficient.

Guestimating monthly operating cost of around 350K (which I think is on the optimistic side for a company the size of NQ and their running cost for the game), that means they'll need at least 50K consistent subscribers to barely stay alive. But I do expect that sub cost will go up to $/€10-12 from 7 early next year at the latest which would make 50K subs a bit more comfortable. Add to that the need to start showing ROI for investors, eventually needing 80-100K subs is more likely..

 

Problem is that it is rather obvious that he game currently will not get close to being able to support those player numbers.

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I would probably have collected money first to upgrade the hardware. At the moment it's hardly fun, because in many places in the game you simply can't play smoothly, despite having your own high-quality hardware.
Furthermore, I would drastically increase the number of cores for players, so that you can also be employed as a sorry builder for 1,2,10 years without any problems, and make the number of cores for organisations dependent on the number of players.
Introduce considerably more elements and toys into the game, more choice in decoration to enable better facilities.
What I miss most of all are more possibilities to create different drives. Atmo engines, space engines, AGG and warp are too few and drastically hinder the players' creativity and possibilities to create really spectacular creations. Ever tried to build a helicopter?

Seriously. If I could actually be CEO, I would create a gamer mix of World of Warcraft, GuildWars2, Archeage and Eve Online. Players would have an enormous amount of employment opportunities for dozens of years. What else is important besides stable hardware, customer service and an obliging helpfulness of the GMs.

If a player has a problem, no matter how small or insignificant, it must be taken seriously.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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4 hours ago, Zarcata said:

I would probably have collected money first to upgrade the hardware. At the moment it's hardly fun, because in many places in the game you simply can't play smoothly, despite having your own high-quality hardware.

 

Which is actualy fun (in bad way), because game practicaly empty and imagined to be played with x1000 more people and their activities around.

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Focus the development team on getting a predictable, stable, scalable performance from the underlying platform, and make sure the available mechanics support that.

Remove any game mechanics that cannot scale.

If you can't do that you don't have a game.

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Probably still focus on current cost cutting measures related to data access/transfer.

 

Kill schematics or make non-schematics printed things have a hefty waste requirement.

 

kill the new skill requirements for accessing simple machines.  Right now industry is the most engaging thing in the game, that players are likely to try themselves.

 

find something for weekly discussions, in response to competitors like Starbase that tend to have multiple YouTube/blogs/steam-news releases in a week.

 

 

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I would have the staff research NFT gaming and make the blue prints NFT's. I would partner with company that can also offer a way to monetize the out of game trading of these NFTs.  We would see some amazing things if people knew they could without violation take their creations in game and sell them out of game for real money. It is like a cosmetic shop where NQ needs to create no art and only do the foundation. Then they take a small % from every transaction. 

    

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Depends as to the context of how I became owner. If my financial survival is on the line I’m going to be cautious, otherwise.....

 

- be totally transparent about the state of the game and the issues

- be more communicative with the community

- take no wipe policy off the table and make clear it is to be determined over the coming months of me checking the health of economy by employing an economist.

- cry

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11 hours ago, bleakcon said:

- take no wipe policy off the table and make clear it is to be determined over the coming months of me checking the health of economy by employing an economist.

 

Its already likely off the table, just as always with NQ sneak way.

 

There is very thin realistic scenario, when they gonna "release" game in 22 (if it happen) with all legacy economic mess, exploiters-trillioinairs and so on.

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On 6/23/2021 at 5:27 PM, Jake Arver said:

You can't build features on a core that is not able to support them.

And still, That is exactly what happens, feature here, feature there, graphic enhancemen there, limitations there. but the core is still the same, fly over another ship and freeze. it has not been as bad as now for years.

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15 minutes ago, Aaron Cain said:

And still, That is exactly what happens, feature here, feature there, graphic enhancemen there, limitations there.

And I suspect, a big part of why they needed 6 months to implement a bare-bone mission system. It is not easy to develop efficiently when the base is a house of cards.

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10 hours ago, DreadZep said:

Lie my ass off about improving the game until the first paycheck. Take the money, assuming its enough, buy a plane ticket to my next job interview to work on project that isnt hopeless.

 

Something that JC actualy done : )

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Well if we start getting patches that actually make performance better instead of worse "but it looks good" or "mission systems" and Solo missions instead of stuff to actually build community and improve the actual game Maybe.

 

The road we are on now is a dead end for a lot of people and apparently they do not realize that most players lost will never come back.

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On 6/23/2021 at 4:50 PM, Kurosawa said:

Support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020.

 

so no company is going to support that, even less so a company that struggles as much as NQ does


Mate can we stop with that braindead non-argument? Nobody is asking for DU to 'support' older systems. If DU decided that to move their engine to a more modern architecture that requires DirectX12 support, then sure, it would be a valid argument. That's not the case - the game works and runs perfectly fine. We just aren't allowed to launch it anymore for arbitrary reasons - and yes, having a deliberately restrictive launcher that does nothing other than update and launch the game is exactly that - deliberate and restrictive.

Again, and I shouldn't have to repeat myself but at this point it feels like I have to in order to drive the point home:  Everybody knows Microsoft stopped support for Win7, Nothing to do with 'supporting an OS or not' - nobody is talking about changing game engine architecture here. If DU came out and said "Microsoft paid us $ to block people from playing" (I'm not saying that this is what happened by the way) - that would make more sense and be far more logical and rational than what you are suggesting. 

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5 hours ago, Volkier said:


Mate can we stop with that braindead non-argument? Nobody is asking for DU to 'support' older systems. If DU decided that to move their engine to a more modern architecture that requires DirectX12 support, then sure, it would be a valid argument. That's not the case - the game works and runs perfectly fine.

 

I get what you mean here -- and why it is frustrating. 

 

However...just because it works for you on Win7 doesn't mean it works for everyone on Win7 or that it will continue working as they roll out more updates. 

 

Consider how supporting an extra OS complicates QA. They have to test it on Win7 -- they can't just assume it works. Even if they do, they would need a Win7 environment to diagnose bugs unless they simply ignore all reports from Win7 users. 

 

Microsoft's support for an OS does matter to makers of software -- including software that NQ relies on to make their game like Unigen, which could add some low-level optimization that breaks on Win7 and forces NQ to pick between legacy OS support or better tech.

 

I get that the game works fine for your machine for this version, but it isn't an 'arbitrary' reason.

 

Beyond all the technical infrastructure that goes into supporting an older OS, Windows 7 is now 11 years old with decreasing global usage (~15%) especially among gamers (on steam, just 0.16% of users are on Win7...because Steam no longer supports it) -- you can't blame NQ for thinking it isn't worth the extra steps in testing or QA! 

 

TBH....I completely agree that they should "just let it run" if they can, but it isn't so simple as flipping a switch or not. 

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