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Call for Demeter-related questions


NQ-Pann

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4 hours ago, Cergorach said:

Sorry, but with all the changes on PTS for Demeter, that will NEVER happen. We saw a ton of builders leave after 0.23, DU never recovered from that. Even the last couple of months many long time builders have gone on a break from DU. When their subscription expires and they try to return, all their bases will be gone. Folks in the know already will not resubscribe (EVER) and folks that didn't know will charge back their subscription fee via their credit card company (besides the subscription fees there are added costs for that for NQ).

 

NQ might eventually wind up with a monthly active player-base of maybe a few hundred-thousand, just like EVE. Just like EVE, DU is a niche MMO. But if that would ever happen, they'll need to be around for a decade and a half, just like EVE. Development of DU goes slow, has many ups and downs, many winding paths, and many backtracking. The strength of EVE was always that you could come back, your stuff would always be there, except of course if you build in PVP space, but all your stuff in npc stations would always be there. Your ships would always fly, the meta might change, you might not have the most optimal fits, but it would work. With the Demeter changes we would only have the stuff left on your starter tile (if they don't change that as well) and any ships there might very well no longer fly and any scripts on it might be broken, even if it flies, it might crater at any moment... But wait you say, what about Space Core Units? Currently they might be fine (but also broken on PTS), but if everyone moves to space, NQ is going to do the same thing to Space Cores as they are doing now to Static Cores...

You can't really compare this game to Eve.  Eve is a fully developed game that has been around for years, and at one point, was worth the sub.  It's been circling the drain for a while now and only being kept alive by the infusion of Chinese players that have already killed their own server.  DU is a far cry from what Eve was.

I want to agree with you, but if they are relying on subs to keep this game going, then I highly doubt they will make it to release.  The ship builders are likely to leave rather than do another fix to their ships.  People who left but want to come back, won't if their stuff is gone due to territory taxes... as well as poor decision making by the devs.  And most people on all sides will likely lose faith in NQ development and will maintain the belief that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing.  Demeter will be the nail in the coffin.

The only way I see this game actually making it is if NQ can find a way to sell this game to a real game company that knows what they are doing... while they still have a product to sell.

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Dear NQ,

 

If you are trying to fix the problem of too many players buying tiles and then leaving the game with all of their territory still claimed, taxes can be the answer. I even like the idea of taxes for this very reason but I think tax pricing is very wrong. Any amount of taxes even an insignificant amount of taxes would acomplish the goal.

 

If all I had to do was pay 1000 quanta a month taxes per tile that would fix it. I'm not saying it should be that low either but as long as there is something I need to pay every month or I will lose my territories it will accomplish the goal of getting rid of abandoned players' territories.  It needs to be a very small amount, and to prevent players owning 2000 territories easily, it should go up in price when buying a territory, like it currently does. 

 

Now lets talk about the economy. The economy will fail if more money is being removed from the economy than being put in. The way I see it right now the only money going into the economy is the 150k a day for each players daily login and the few players doing missions from the market. Your proposed taxes will subtract far more than this amount of money every day eventually causing an economic collapse in the game. Economics 101.  If most of the player money gets subtracted from the game by taxes how does money reenter the game or get put back in the system? Missions and 150k a day? Hell no, do not force me to play your unfun and low profit missions.

 

This is supposed to be a game about freedom and playing the way you want but after these changes I will be forced to spend many hours a week just to keep owning the tiles that I spent a lot of time earning money to own already.  I don’t want to pay a monthly fee for that.

 

I hope for the future of this game that the taxes will be adjusted to be much more reasonable. 

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Remove the territory tax and link the property to a subscription. As soon as the sub expires plus 4 weeks of error tolerance, the territory and everything on it becomes accessible for all to loot. if an active subscription is running, your own things are secured. So the players can keep everything and NQ gets support through the sub. Win-win and nobody cries.

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Try posting any feedback on the YouTube video, tell us all what happens...

 

They wiping anything but praise. WTF

 

I hope the feedback here is listened to. I and my 15 accounts stayed prior. This however may do me. 

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(1) Would it be possible to have a lower tax for tiles that does not feature an auto miner... then as soon one is put down the tax will increase?

(2) For calibrated surface ore spots, could we have markers just appear for their location as soon as you enter the tile ? 

 

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Questions:
1 If Territory taxes are not paid what are those “bad things” which may happen to my assets in that territory. 

2 Is releasing ownership one option? 

2.1 Follow-up: Will it create cheap and easy loot.

 

Assuming my Subscription still remains active.

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11 hours ago, FalloutWB said:

You can't really compare this game to Eve.  Eve is a fully developed game that has been around for years

I'm not comparing the current EVE to the DU of today. I'm comparing the possible future DU against the current EVE and the EVE of the past to the DU of today. Look at EVE from 2003, while I didn't play it then, I've seen gameplay from then and it was rough! I would even say that the current DU doesn't compare favorably to the EVE of December 2005 (when I started playing EVE)... DU has potential, sure, just not the potential of millions of monthly players (in our lifetimes). But currently I have large question marks whether or not DU will even be around in another year or so...

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5 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

There has been so much player feedback for so many pages now, isn't it time for a response or general reaction from NQ? I would like to have a discussion and not a soliloquy.

NQ is a company, a company is run by people, who also need a weekend to decompress and recover. Sure there is (limited) support in the weekend, but I suspect that any serious responses will have to wait until the working week. Even then they need time to go through the responses, make notes, compare notes, discuss and (maybe) respond here. Just don't hold your breath waiting... ?

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As others have said, taxes don't really need to be as high as they are in order to get tile re-use.  I would make a couple of changes to the way the territory wallets work:
- Remove the ability to withdraw money from the wallet.  Once you paid up front it stays paid.

- Put a maximum balance on the wallet.  Make it something like 3 months worth of fees.

With those two changes you could achieve the goal of having AFK players' territory returned while only charging 1h per week.  With a sensible charge like 100,000h per week people could pre-pay for 3 months at a time and with appropriate warnings when this gets low this would be manageable.

I also like the suggestion made above that different tile uses generate different taxes.  Perhaps different types of TCU could do this -- a residential TCU and a mining TCU with different rates, for example.  But I'm wondering here if the tile could just have a base tax rate which is small and the rest of the money could be taken by mining units when they are activated.  So you just pay a small amount of h each time the mining unit is charged.  That would have the same quanta-draining effect which is needed for a player driven economy with missions while massively reducing the burden on people who just want to build the world.

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I do hope NQ staff actually reads the many forum threads on this and not just expects everyone to post here. Especially since NQ actually started three separate threads on this topic

 

Woudl also be nice to actually see some engagement in these discussions ..

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Here are my questions for NQ:

 

Will the sanctuary moon also be taxed in the future if they want to create a game world for hundreds of thousands of players, the space on the moon will not be enough.

 

Is planned to tax space station and in what form.

 

What will happen to the owner's dynamic constructs located on territories if the tax is not paid.

 

Will there be a safe place or mechanics for paying subscribers to keep their stuff safe.

 

What bad things will happen if we don't pay the taxes.

 

Do they really want to penalize players who can't spend that much time on the game.

 

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Wings and engines have two orientation/placement challenges. The obstruction area and the effective orientation. Both in the same direction. But the atmo brakes now have only the obstruction in a different direction and no effective orientation? Will they also get an effective orientation in the future? And what will that direction be?

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Auto-Mining:
Before I get into my major concerns I would like to say thank you for replacing the current system of mining underground with something better than "click, watch circle get big, release." I think the system holds a lot of potential if balanced right, will be more rewarding than the current mining system, and I am glad that it can help NQ unburden some overhead cost, especially as the player base must be much smaller than NQ's business model accounted for.

My only concern with mining-units is the "chicken or egg" dynamic of need to have same tier ore to build the mining unit. Where I feel it would be more sensible to require T2 ore for a T3 unit, T3 ore for a T4 unit, etc. Otherwise NQ risks progression locking players with a mechanic that subjects them to predatory exploitation of players who have gotten to T4 and T5 already. 

If players are willing to exploit mechanics to gain billions in quanta they will not hesitate to exploit players to stratify the economy and widen the gap between a few with everything and the mass majority with the left overs.


Territory Tax:
NQ claims that a player driven economy and player made content is the backbone of the game. Yet builders who are working hundreds if not thousands of hours over the past two years risk losing the most with projects that are focused on building unique locations for others to visit.

Building and selling blueprints is simply not competitive with the earnings made through current mining, and with changes to the economy sales of ship and building designs has gone off the cliff as everyone hoards currency and materials to survive upcoming changes.

I also feel that a clear and final tile tax rates MUST be announced 30-60 days before Demeter release to give adequate time for organization of assets to prevent huge and punishing loses to the creative community within Dual Universe.

People simply need to know what they will and won't lose and what to do to safeguard their hard work, NQ's ambiguity simply drives ambiguity, and snarky responses from support team when players want to know if they can reasonably expect to earn enough from auto-mining to cover taxes for the number of tiles they own is simply inflammatory.

 


In-Game Abuse Reports:
I am hoping bans won't become automated, and will also have a review system that takes context of the situation into account. It is well known we have members of the community who bait, troll, and instigate to produce reactions that they can then report to weaponize the NQ support staff against players.

Some of these people are the same individuals who have exploited, and abused mechanics to gain advantage over the players they taunt and bait with their comments.

Also feel rule #10 of the Code of Conduct should be removed from the CoC, as the demographic of the player base on average is well above 30 years of age, and there are things that 8 year old's say these days that make me blush. It is no secret that colorful language is often present in passionate expression ideals, dissatisfaction etc. 

The rule is ambiguous as to how much profanity is excessive, and it is well known players purposefully instigate and antagonize others into the point of frustration where profanity is used and then weaponize abuse reports against them. 

It is a highly dishonorable tactic that needs addressing.

My use of a four letter word, or expression of frustration is by no means as harmful to the community as the exploits, use of alt accounts, etc. for players to manipulate the economy, and gain huge material advantage over those they taunt and troll.

This while seeming off topic I believe will become highly relevant with in game abuse reports coming in Demeter.


Voxelmancy Tools:
Last but not least I want to thank you for working to provide tools to make building more accessible to everyone, I think this is awesome. My only concern here is will this cause more "invalid cell error" issues in the future?


Closing Summary:
Thank you very much for the work being put into DU, I know I am critical of some of the decisions. Mainly I just have a huge fear of losing hundreds if not thousands of hours of work. Dual Universe is the one place I feel I have my little slice of peace to escape from RL stress. 

I don't need to be rich, or have the best guns, or even biggest ship... I treat my tile territories as a carefully maintained zen garden, and right now I see fire burning all around that garden threatening to take it away. To take away the very little peace I have some days.

I work with victims of violent crime, sexual assault and domestic abuse with my job as a government contractor, trying to help them rebuild after horrible events. It is a job that is emotionally taxing, and Dual Universe is how I cope with the stresses of that job, and the risks of harm and even death from violent people who would do me harm to get to the survivors they have victimized.

Respectfully,

Creator

 

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After cycling through a lot of scans I've noticed a theme.  So previously (I'll use Ion) most hexes contained Silver and 60-70% contained some Rhondite.

 

PTS shows yes Silver is present 200l per hour (so one scoop hehe) but literally no tiles contained Rhondite on my scans at least.  Is NQ basically pushing the narrative 'if you want high tier ore you need to go to asteroids and PvP' thus a sneaky way to avoid having to remove safezones overall?  It certainly seems that way for higher tier ore.

 

Still we got to remember as a miner you could mine a lot per day.  Now your limited to mining unit and/or going to PvP for it.  With PvP so broken still and also dominated by a group of people maybe you just need to come out with that narrative ?

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Unable to use mining unit with patch in Demeter Update. Spent Several hours in update. Have reported bug in in-game bug-report method but for some reason that was not the appropriate method Kept Getting Unauthorized Request. Multiple Bugs encountered while placing mining unit. If this is the replacement to mining then it needs to be looked at.
The demand for bug reports to be put on a public forum to is absolutely unacceptable. Disgrace... Accept the ticket from the in-game method that you provide! Or change it to a forum link. Pretty easy... Dont send me a email back telling me to report bugs here. Take the feedback. dont give me more work!!!!! 

Desktop Screenshot 2021.10.29 - 23.57.36.76.png

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Casual Players

Given the amount of tax per tile, this will make it very hard for casual players to hold tiles or even want them, this will then limit the number of casual players who would want to play the game.

 

I had hoped the tiles would work on a basis of number of tiles owned per player, where like now the tax increases the more you have or for tiles to cost more per tile that is occupied near them increases the tax, so that those who gain the additional benefits of owning more tiles next to each other also pay more taxes.

 

Now given the schematics cost a fortune to start with, the addition of taxes will remove any want of casual players to play this game. 

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On my tile a friend of mine was building a base in the mountain. He made a couple of mistakes braking the mountain and patched the holes with snow using terraforming tools. Today I logged on the PTS to see how the base will look after the demeter update and those snow patches are still there. So as I understand something went wrong and my tile didn't reset fully.

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@NQ

 

Please reconsider ending this testing session on early Monday morning. This test is extremely important and the players that are committed to thoroughly exploring the jns and outs of this change were given several obstacles to contend with.

 

First, many players have been dealing with the geometry reset. My base is underground and I needed to spend a good amount of time to just asses to the impact to my area and reach my linked containers.

 

Next, there was the utterly incomprehensible decision to test a change to airbrakes simultaneous to the actual Demeter testing. Experimenting to discover what will and won't obstruct brakes so that I can just fly mining units somewhere is crazy to ask in such a short timeframe. 

 

Lastly, consider the full lifecycle of operating a mining unit. Calibrate to get it running, then recalibrate as the percentage gets low. Well you have a 48 hour cooldown on calibrations for a test that spans only a weekend.

 

This entire test seems to be more of a formality than a legitimate exercise to assure the quality of the product and give players a chance to provide meaningful feedback. 

 

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I'm playing solo casually and spend most of time in scripting. I use quanta only for schematics.

 

Looks like i need half dozen hexes per planet and five planets should cover all ores. So, 25-30 hexes, which  is 25-30 millions per week. That will kill my game in few weeks.

 

I would expect a tax of 10000 per hex to be sustainable when collecting daily income during weekends with few alts.

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7 hours ago, Cergorach said:

NQ is a company, a company is run by people, who also need a weekend to decompress and recover. Sure there is (limited) support in the weekend, but I suspect that any serious responses will have to wait until the working week. Even then they need time to go through the responses, make notes, compare notes, discuss and (maybe) respond here. Just don't hold your breath waiting... ?

This weekend release of the PTS NQ was supposed to be playing with the community and I have yet to see any of that so again lies

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