Why removing scans is the correct choice by NQ

[Novean-32184]

I've been rather amazed by the outrage over the fact NQ correctly decided to remove scans with Demeter. It means that many actually have not been paying attention and have been scanning like madmen and women for no reason at all as the scans you make now would not have any value with Demeter to start off with.

 

I can see how this, in part was caused by the overall very bad communication by NQ, no surprise there, and the lack of clarity in the now release BLOG post (again no surprise).

 

HERE is the important bit of the LATEST VLOG, anything before that is really irrelevant.

 

It quite clearly shows Deckard explaining that existing scans HAVE NO VALUE IN DEMETER, in fact both him and Sesch very directly hint as a new seed for ore with Demeter and so previous scans become inaccurate at best and as presented they become obsolete..

 

 

Removing them is the correct decision for once, the delivery and explanation of that decision is the usual disaster.

[Wargearer]

removing scans  you just shit on our heads as with taxes end mining units with stupid yelds  i VOTE NO FOR ALL THAT SHIT

 

[Torsten]

Erhm. They are not saying what you claim them to be saying.

 

Deckard is explaining that the current scans UNDERGROUND portion has no value in demeter as the ore will no longer be there. Imagine now in pre-demeter someone going to town on a tile and mined every single piece of ore out of there. The scan would still have the old values, but there would not be a single liter of ore in there. Same with demeter. Old scans would still show what used to be in the ground, but it won't be there.

 

The seed they are referring to is the seed for the random number generator used to generate the noise for the ore distribution. This is unrelated to current pre-demeter ore distribution as a tile currently full of coal can have 0 L/h after demeter. That the seed will be different on the live servers compared to the PTS. This was already well known and uncontested and needed so people couldn't scan on PTS to know where the good tile in Live would be. Also completely unrelated to old scans.

[Novean-32184]

 

Quote

Transscript:

 

On the question about a scan showing 429.25KL or coal but the pool is 0L/H

 

Deckard:
So, The coal that was in that terrain no longer exists there mso that is actually old information that is still stored in the tiny littel data item that you got from your scan.
So, the information is still in there.
However, it is not actually accurate anymore
The new values that you see in the pool, that is the L/H, that is the actual resource availability on that tile going forward with Demeter

However, that is not to say that what you are seeing on the PTS is the same as what is going to be the same as what is going to be on the Live server when Demeter comes out. 
Those values wil be different

 

Sesch:
Yes, we are going to use a different seed for the generation of ore underground so the values will not be the same.
Just keep that in mind
So, if you see zero right now on your scan, it does not mean that when it goes to production it's going to be zero, maybe it will be a different valkue for coal

 

 

What this implies is that values on the scan you make now wil be irrelevant once Demeter arrives.

 

Now, If current scans magically show the new L/H values after demeter without a rescan, besides being a very bad thing and if so, in itself a prime reason to remove the scans as it would IMO be an exploit.

 

As I said, the wording NQ uses is really terrible and they really are not clean and clear in their messaging as per the usual, that much I would never dispute. But regardless of this, the eventual decision to remove pre-Demeter scans when it arrives is sensible and correct.

[Torsten]

6 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:

Now, If current scans magically show the new L/H values after demeter without a rescan, besides being a very bad thing and if so, in itself a prime reason to remove the scans as it would IMO be an exploit.

This is exactly how it was on the PTS. Old scans showed the new L/h values. This is how they intended for it to be up until today

 

People are not outraged because the scan items will be deleted. People are mostly upset that they were told that existing scans would be "magically" updated in Demeter and have spent the last few weeks preparing for that, only to be now be told "no, that's not going to happen". Personally I'm that category. And then you also have the people who are upset that their thousands of scans they were told would be useful are now useless

[Novean-32184]

 

If that is the argument then I would certainly say that removing the scans was the correct call by NQ. I could see some not being happy with them eventually coming to their senses but that is the case. The mechanic has changed drastically, previous results are no longer valid and having access to what pretty much is a new start woudl at least be uinfair and IMO really be an exploit.

 

The context of the part of the VLOG in the transcript should really expose that as such and the fact that a good many went out to take advantage of this in advance should in itself be a clear sign of it being an exploit and finally a move by NQ which shows some spine in protecting the integrity of the game. That people qho took advantage of this are upset with the eventual outcome I can understand but I do not agree that this is either justified or shows a sense of realism in what's good for the game.

 

Now, if we could see NQ stay on this path and make more of thise correct decisions, there may be a chance of this game getting somewhere yet.

 

[MethosShadow]

Me being a person with over 15k scans . This is the right decision. And i get to do more scanning 

[Warlander]

5 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

I've been rather amazed by the outrage over the fact NQ correctly decided to remove scans with Demeter. It means that many actually have not been paying attention and have been scanning like madmen and women for no reason at all as the scans you make now would not have any value with Demeter to start off with.

 

I can see how this, in part was caused by the overall very bad communication by NQ, no surprise there, and the lack of clarity in the now release BLOG post (again no surprise).

 

HERE is the important bit of the LATEST VLOG, anything before that is really irrelevant.

 

It quite clearly shows Deckard explaining that existing scans HAVE NO VALUE IN DEMETER, in fact both him and Sesch very directly hint as a new seed for ore with Demeter and so previous scans become inaccurate at best and as presented they become obsolete..

 

 

Removing them is the correct decision for once, the delivery and explanation of that decision is the usual disaster.

 

You rolled out the jump to conclusions mat on this Jake

 

If you watched both Vlogs you would know that they arent hinting at anything when they said in the first Vlog they intentionally made the PTS data different so that you could check out the scanning process and the infinite ore pool and it would be different then the actual seeded tiles when Demeter goes live.

 

If you watched the rest of the video you posted they go on to say that they are screwed no matter what they do and they dont want people to loose their hard world and wont split the baby in half and will NOT remove scans. @23:48-26:54.

 

If your trying to get people to delete their scans thats shady bro.

[Atmosph3rik]

2 hours ago, Warlander said:

 

You rolled out the jump to conclusions mat on this Jake

 

 

 

 

Haha someone did

 

Quote

A CHANGE OF HEART, THE REMOVAL OF SCAN RESULTS
We received a considerable amount of feedback from players who were opposed to keeping old scan results relevant. And following some internal discussions on the topic, we feel that it is indeed in the best interest of the game to provide a clean slate when it comes to mining data to prevent the hottest of hotspots from being immediately taken. As such, we will be clearing all scan results from the game when Demeter goes live. 

 

We realise that this will inconvenience some of the players who have large amounts of scan data; however, we do believe it is the right thing to do.

 

 

[Novean-32184]

The comments about being screwed whatever they do were in relation to a wipe, not regarding scans. so no, those comments do not have any relevance here. you can't pick and choose what was said out of context to suit your narrative here.

 

It is very clear that things changed in the internal discussion between VLOG1 (which was actually recorded prior to th Ares release) and VLOG2 and you can't connect the two or try and spin some middle ground from that.

 

This change of heart is, for me at least, a first signal that there may be a shift in attitude within NQ as I mentioned earlier, they seems to have actually picked up on  some of the arguments and realized the (potential) problems not removing the scans would have and frankly, by the sheer number of people who apparently started exploiting this loophole, they were clearly right.

 

Yes, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, but here, because they did, they won points in my book and I hope to see more of this new attitude as I firmly believe that it will be better for the game, and that is exactly what I have always been saying. We're not there yet, but it is a start.

 

[Muhadmananda]

When I read about Demeter I trashed most of my scans as I didn't even think not wiping them was an option to think of... Afterwards I watched the vblog and was like omg really how can they not wipe...good they listened and changed their mind as I think such a change to mining would be ruined if all old scans would work. 

 

But dare you wipe at release after all this time of saying you won't ?

[XKentX]

 

On 11/17/2021 at 9:35 AM, Muhadmananda said:

But dare you wipe at release after all this time of saying you won't ?

They will wipe at release. You will keep your talent points and (non-magic) blueprints so you can recreate them.

Wealth, mats and constructs will go poof.

 

What 100 people that are still playing DU think about this is irrelevant. They are not enough to make the game sustainable anyway.

[Warlander]

Well Ill admit when I am wrong. My apologies Jake.

 

Looks like NQ put their flip flops on.

[Novean-32184]

Oh, NQ certainly can be blamed for a lot of this mess because of the muddy and "talk around the issue" style of discussion this. They have caused a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions about what they were going to do as they probably did not really know themselves yet. The last VLOG was pretty clear though even when they stopped short of making a firm statement on this then.

 

I still expect them to bring in power management of sorts as it's really needed for the game and that will be the next big "surprise" which will have a deep impact in a lot of parts of the game. There are reasons why things like this need to come in early and then get tweaked along the way. If you bring it in for an initial version on a live game with paying customers, you will run into trouble.

 

And yes, as @XKentX mentioned..  I fully expect a wipe as he described it above  (everything goes away, you keep standard blueprints and talent points which go back into the pool). This patch would have been a good spot to do that, but I think NQ only wants to do it once and so choose to not pull that card just yet since there will me more "surprises" coming that also justify a wipe. I do not think it will be at release, it will be some time before release when NQ feels they reached a point where the game actually goes into beta and not just has the label attached. That should be a very different point compared to a year ago though and IF NQ is able to pull this around it may well be a good thing for the game and allow it to actually take off from there.

 

But we'll see..