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Demeter=DU has failed in fundamental game design requiring either a full rebuild or re-kickstart


Warlander

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35 minutes ago, Doombad said:

The fundamental point you’re missing  is that games like DU are based around a concept. They will implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game. Assuming some all knowing designer has the vision mapped out from A to Z is naive at best.

If it was such a bubble, no one would have signed up to the Kickstarter project and invested money.
There was more than just a concept. There were ideas about what should be possible. The problem, however, was that many of them could not be realised, but people still wanted to hold on to many dreams.
In principle, we are now getting a kind of DualUniverse light. A slimmed-down version of the once great dream. Honestly, it was too good to be true. If you look at all the games on the market, they all have the same structure. Why do you think that is? Why doesn't a developer studio with a financial cushion dare to do something bigger and new? 
If I look at NewWorld as a comparison, players ran to the forums because there were too few quests, because there was too much grind in the game, because the housing was too small, because they wanted more dungeons, raids, PvP content, more, more, more. Now I look at DualUniverse with the content and...you can now also compare NewWorld with Teso, Aion, ArcheAge, WoW, Minecraft,.... 

seriously, we are at the beginning of an alpha after >7years with DualUniverse and still discussing the basic techniques of the game. So the basic content to even have a kind of game, what should be in it. 
At the moment it only includes limited voxel building and a mission tour. So the missions will be expanded after Demeter, great, grandiose content where only the package name and the story text will be adjusted. 
There is also the skill system, including the logic error, which hardly allows any differences between the players. Most of the players have the same skills anyway. Pilots-weapons-radar or industry, manufacturing, mining,....whoever does that with a few twinks can also cover everything. in principle, you are hardly dependent on other players, since you don't really have to decide on the value of many things, but it is extremely spread out.
I don't want to open a can of worms about PvP, which is a catastrophic state and a mega construction site where you haven't even poured a proper foundation, but you're already dreaming of a mega building.
If the Demeter game were published, it would simply be a laughing stock and probably one of the biggest cautionary tales of how not to do it. We are now at the end of 2021 with Demeter. 2022 is just around the corner and it is supposed to be published "right away". What content is there to come in a hurry that could really convince?
I don't know, you can dream and have ideas, but every now and then I get the thought that the developers really lack ideas and creativity, but at the same time the view of a real player. Who among the developers has really played great games for several years?
 

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3 hours ago, Zarcata said:

In principle, we are now getting a kind of DualUniverse light.

That's sad but overdue. It was clear for years thast the original vision is out of reach. Considering the finnancial situation all NQ can do is putting on the emergency brake, picking all working pieces together and turning them into a game that can be sold on the market. If they manage to return the investment, they might start a new attempt with advanced technology and this time with experiences in game developement.

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20 hours ago, Doombad said:

The fundamental point you’re missing  is that games like DU are based around a concept. They will implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game. Assuming some all knowing designer has the vision mapped out from A to Z is naive at best.

 

I can agree with his comment pretty much 100% 

 

That said though, it basically explains WHY DU is in trouble. JC had a vision which, on paper, was really cool. He then went ahead and started work on implementing that vision but never did the things you mentioned " implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game".

JC pretty much nearly drove DU (and with it NQ) off a cliff by ignoring feedback, by blindly following his vision, never questioning if what he was trying to achieve was actually doable and adjusting for what was possible instead of pushing what was not. It's been mentioned many times, but JC especially would just throw a "you do not understand" at any questions about his choices and decisions. He did so up to and including his last hooray almost a year ago in the "A Look Ahead" video. It was a massively overambitious list of things to come this year which was easily seen as a "wishlist of achievements" more than "this is what we can do". Basically, JC promised NQ would do more in a single year than they did in the 6 years prior with no sign of available funding and a dwindling player base.

 

His stubborn mindset cost him is dream and his company. It remains to be seen if it cost us the ability to play a game with massive potential and promise.

 

 

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On 11/17/2021 at 11:53 AM, Ving said:

I don't see what game is actually left after Demeter, except an auto-mining-tax-simulator. From what they have been saying in the dev blogs "you should be able to make a profit from auto-mining", it certainly doesn't sound like there will be enough ore to actually build anything one you'e paid your taxes. How are you supposed to gather the 1m ore needed for even a small base worth of voxels? Login every two days and play the auto-mine mini-game...for a few years...until you have enough ore to actually build something?

 

 

 

Surely you fly into space and mine asteroids?  For me it is much more entertaining and mining on the ground.

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4 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

 

I can agree with his comment pretty much 100% 

 

That said though, it basically explains WHY DU is in trouble. JC had a vision which, on paper, was really cool. He then went ahead and started work on implementing that vision but never did the things you mentioned " implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game".

JC pretty much nearly drove DU (and with it NQ) off a cliff by ignoring feedback, by blindly following his vision, never questioning if what he was trying to achieve was actually doable and adjusting for what was possible instead of pushing what was not. It's been mentioned many times, but JC especially would just throw a "you do not understand" at any questions about his choices and decisions. He did so up to and including his last hooray almost a year ago in the "A Look Ahead" video. It was a massively overambitious list of things to come this year which was easily seen as a "wishlist of achievements" more than "this is what we can do". Basically, JC promised NQ would do more in a single year than they did in the 6 years prior with no sign of available funding and a dwindling player base.

 

His stubborn mindset cost him is dream and his company. It remains to be seen if it cost us the ability to play a game with massive potential and promise.

 

 

 

Its the little things though they could have tweaked or done.

 

Its like obviously the voxels werent working and there were days that you just couldnt dig, fly a ship, go to the market without the game crashing and the voxels were the root of the issue but they then go and develop more complex world geometry because they werent happy with the tile grid which was fine and nobody was really ever complaining about in the first place.

 

They wanted to make voxelmancy easier by giving us a vertex editing tool when anyone at any time could take the time to learn it and master it. This was not totally needed but with how laggy it is already lets just pile ontop of that was a great idea.

 

Or creating an org bank account that should have taken a month to impliment that took them years to bring out.

 

Or missions which are childsplay for any other studio to make a waypoint, spawn an icon in your inventory, go to location, and complete the quest but it took NQ years to bring out and yet they never thought to tie it to the org bank system and the tax system to pay out the missions rather than just endlessly flood the economy with hundreds of millions or more constantly.

 

Or that NQ at any time could have just added all TUs you own to the map and list in its own tab and tied saved all the time they spent on making a TU management system and just used the checkbox to flag taxes and a secondary checkbox for HQ tiles and spent that time, money, and effort anywhere else.

 

Its like all the small simple things they could have done but they are still trapped in the car driving off the cliff even if they kicked JC out the car its still going off the cliff since nobody is behind the wheel.

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I think a big part of the problems NQ has is that there is little or no central/common code used accross features or core abilities to share/pass data. Everything needs to be done separately which in part shows through the inconsistent and wildly varying UI/UX styles and implementations to the point where a UI panel can have two search boxes for the same functionn, yet both have a different way of working and react differently to user input.

 

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7 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

 

I can agree with his comment pretty much 100% 

 

That said though, it basically explains WHY DU is in trouble. JC had a vision which, on paper, was really cool. He then went ahead and started work on implementing that vision but never did the things you mentioned " implement different ideas, get feedback, adjust, and evolve the game".

JC pretty much nearly drove DU (and with it NQ) off a cliff by ignoring feedback, by blindly following his vision, never questioning if what he was trying to achieve was actually doable and adjusting for what was possible instead of pushing what was not. It's been mentioned many times, but JC especially would just throw a "you do not understand" at any questions about his choices and decisions. He did so up to and including his last hooray almost a year ago in the "A Look Ahead" video. It was a massively overambitious list of things to come this year which was easily seen as a "wishlist of achievements" more than "this is what we can do". Basically, JC promised NQ would do more in a single year than they did in the 6 years prior with no sign of available funding and a dwindling player base.

 

His stubborn mindset cost him is dream and his company. It remains to be seen if it cost us the ability to play a game with massive potential and promise.

 

 

This is a fair perspective. ?

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49 minutes ago, Bobbie said:

It really doesn't. Whatever else we want to say about the future of DU and the playerbase, the massive potential and promise it once had is definitively ruled out. NQ's tech has proven fundamentally incapable of delivering it.

 

And as far as I'm concerned that makes everything else we want to say about DU's history kinda moot, as it turns out DU has always been a dud.

 

That should be its new name...

 

Honestly a Studio like NQ has all the power to make decisions and change course and its not as hopeless vs some AAA studio or foreign studio pushing patches through a hosting company with their hands tied. I do feel it is worth discussing. All it takes is a consensus and just bombarding every social media platform with it until they cant ignore it. It sounds impossible but it is totally possible to save this game.

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1 hour ago, Bobbie said:

My point is that the "massive potential and promise" that DU supposedly had, has already proven to be physically impossible. The potential was never actually there in the tech, it was just hope and imagination. A soap bubble. A fantasy.

 

NQ has failed in many ways, no doubt about it, but it doesn't matter. Because nothing they could have done would have changed the fact, that the tech would never have been able to support the critical mass of players and activity required for the emergent game world to come to life.

 

So no, it doesn't remain to be seen. Whatever may yet be saved of the game, it will be nothing like "massive potential and promise". What we have now is pretty much it. And in case you hadn't noticed, they are actually removing more of the game than they are adding, in a last ditch effort to make it viable.

 

The Tech is there its just they went total ham on a fully destructible environment without proper speed limits and damage mitigation while giving a lot more ore per node and not compounding it with how the scanners worked to destroy the game that much faster. They didnt need to make it as such to need to destroy a tile for such a low amount of ore (unless you got a 10 mil mine). The mining isnt really the important part as the voxelization itself presents without using static meshes would have done the same thing if they just had the same idea of auto miners with some 2D mining game on a static mesh world or a voxel to mesh tool for buildings.

 

I know it was too tempting to bring in the minecraft crowd along with those who played space engineers and those EPs have a lot to live upto and it works in a low res or multiplay environment that required a careful touch to pull off on an MMO scale but harsh limits were needed while still providing the same experience doing more with less then less is more.

 

It could have worked if they kept a lot of things simple as this type of game is not meant for long term buildings, market graveyards, and just the yard trash without world healing or just straight up zone filling once it was empty or a % of ore was left. This type of game is meant for seasons with FFA opposing sides and just fighting it out until one side wins and a new solar system is created for an Empire vs Rebels deathmatch starts new.

 

They just let people too much too fast and build too much without checks and balances to remove as much as is created.

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6 hours ago, Warlander said:

It could have worked if they kept a lot of things simple as this type of game is not meant for long term buildings

That is the exact opposite of the main premise in the Kickstarter for this game. JC used to talk endlessly about flying over mega cities and star bases the size of moons.

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5 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

That is the exact opposite of the main premise in the Kickstarter for this game. JC used to talk endlessly about flying over mega cities and star bases the size of moons.

 

I think JC was imagining a metaverse, but that's not what DU is. There's not enough funding or demand for that. So maybe it's a mere stepping stone to metaverse. Like VR in the 90's the world and technology probably isn't ready for metaverse.

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25 minutes ago, Bobbie said:

Doesn't anyone remember what you signed up for back in the day? What you pledged your money to support? How much faith you used to have in NQ to create something awesome and groundbreaking that would redefine MMO?

 

Yeah no it most assuredly does not remain to be seen!

 

I know it can be difficult to remember, as those days are long gone. Not many of us left either. And it's been a long, boiling frog kinda road to where we are now, hasn't it.

Some things the WorldWideWeb never forgets.

-> 
 

Quote

 

The idea of Dual Universe is both simple and ambitious: one huge virtual “Dual” universe where you are free to invent your own story, start anew in a boundless world.  

How can we do it? Why now? Well, all this is made possible today because of our groundbreaking new server and voxel technologies that we have been working on for the last 3 years. Together with the current improvements in bandwidth and Cloud infrastructures, we have reached a point where this old dream can finally come true! We want to push the boundaries of the MMO genre and create a new kind of incredible collective experience, where players will be able to rebuild civilization together.

 


 

Quote

 

In Dual Universe, you can for example:

Build a giant space station the size of a moon with your friends

Create an intergalactic political Empire

Gather along with thousands of others in player-made cities

Get hundreds of players inside space exploring ships

Mass-produce your custom designed ships to sell them in-game

Become a trader, a logistician or an industrialist

Program complex behaviors for your constructions

Live in a secret base 1km underground on a remote moon

Make a name as a spaceship designer or outpost architect

In other words, in Dual Universe, you can invent a new life for yourself in a world without limits, where almost anything is possible. We aim to make a massively multiplayer roleplaying sandbox on PC like never seen before.

 

 

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Risks and challenges

Developing a game, and a MMO in particular, is an incredibly difficult and complex task. Our 25 people team is experienced and has worked and shipped several titles already before, and therefore we fully measure how challenging a project like Dual Universe is. Here are some of the things we are facing: - We don’t create content, or traditional game level design. We do high-level game mechanisms, which are complex and hard to balance. - We have several new technologies, in particular the server technologies, that are trying to solve problems that have never been solved before. It may not work as planned, or as our current testing suggests. - We have set for ourselves an ambitious fast release cycle. We may encounter unseen problems that could delay our schedule. Unless what you do has already been done before countless of times, you can never be sure how much time it will take. - The whole game is a brand new way of doing MMO. What will emerge from this universe? It’s at the same time exciting, but also very risky. We try to orient the game design towards interesting dynamics, but we cannot be sure. The energy that drives us is the energy of the explorers. We have done that before, we have explored, we have innovated, the whole team is an incredibly talented and world-class, so we are both excited and confident that we can deal with these challenges. In any case, here is what we can promise you: - Absolute transparency about the development progress - 100% of the funding will go to the development of Dual Universe, more specifically to pay the developers & artists. The whole point of Novaquark is Dual Universe, and we are not doing anything else. - Engage with the community and listen to your feedback, with new and innovative ways to get you directly involved in the roadmap decisions. With your help, nothing is impossible. We are so excited and happy to have this opportunity to make this old dream come true: the first online virtual civilization, Dual Universe! Thank you so much for your support!

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I came here after Beta started and was never sold on the hypetrain or stuck on some acid trip vision quest of JC was hucking. I dont remember any of the broken promises or sit here chasing my tail about what could have been. I see it for what it is and for what it has become. This game was never going to be what was sold to you all.

 

What I do know is this game is suffering from an identity crisis driven by listening to what NQ thought people wanted via the PvP side of this game and jumped head long into that while trying to appease the building community. What they have developed in not fun for both groups with all the red tape, punishments, sinks, and taxes they thought would work to slow down all the exploits to mining via scanning, or the massive industries they allowed to be built without ever addressing any of the real issues plaging the game because they misunderstood their playerbase and thought we would build it all for them.

 

Players arent devs and nobody really wants to experience the content we create other then the practical missing parts of the game players created. As content consumers of virtual content its all lacking in any form of fun gameplay with all the missing MMO elements that were needed to actually turn this into a game. Their roadmap is really short sighted and they seem more focused on redoing everything they origionally made and pushing stagnation in some kind of attempt to force PvP to happen when they again dont undersant PvP games they tried to emulate and what makes them tick or give reason to fight in the first place.

 

 

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Sometimes I wonder if any of the people who talk about "the mega orgs" have ever been in one or even worked together with one?  How many active players do you think a typical "mega-org" has had since 0.23?  And how many people do you think they can get online at once?

There has been nothing "mega" about anything in this game since the 0.23 "upgrade".

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44 minutes ago, Bobbie said:

Don't kid yourself, the only difference between what you're doing and what backers have been doing is that your world starts at T minus 1 year instead of 4+.

Yeah.. The few of us that are left and has been here since the beginning know the cycle well.

 

- New players join and proclaim DU is the best thing since sliced bread and calling old timers names because of the negativity

- Then after some game time, they notice things are not all there and start asking more critical questions

- Then they start to get frustrated with the slow dev progress of the game

- Then they start to ask harder questions, and are now a part of the "negative old timers" group themself

- And then finally because NQ "feedback" is a one way street, they give up and leave the game

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On 11/15/2021 at 5:41 PM, Creator said:


Honestly, I am mad that I am being punished for having a life outside of DU vs. scheduling everything around this game for "optimized" calibrations for tile taxes, when I just wanted to have my little island resort of 20 tiles with protected views that I spent 2 years on, and was really coming together until this shit cut loose.

So mad to lose hard work... yes, mad for being punished for working a lot rl and game trying to enslave my free time... yes. mad that I spent hundreds of hours doing things I didn't want to in order to just build and create... hell yes... and I am not the only one that feels any of these things.

 

You can only see about 1 tile in any direction?  Surely the most you ever need for that is 7 tiles.

Do the maths.  Alioth has about 60,000 tiles.  If every player has 20 then we can only get about 3,000 players on Alioth before it fills up.  Less in practice unless they arrange themselves nicely.  And if all those players can just leave and keep their tiles forever, how long before the game is full of dead land like certain other dead MMOs out there?  Was it ever realistic to think that island was yours forever?

Depending on your account type, though, you might be able to make all 20 into HQ tiles.  I have the cheapest pre-beta backing package which gave me 2 extra beta keys.  I can have 15 HQ tiles with that, which is close to your 20.  With 4 accounts (even cheaper now you can sub them for 1 month each) you can make all the tiles into HQ tiles forever ...

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