Jump to content

Gathering your questions for the Q&A on Wednesday, December 1st


NQ-Nyzaltar

Recommended Posts

Why are effects in game so overdone and unnatural looking in many cases.

 

Few example;

  • The "dust cloud" created by the flattening tool is way overdone and too thick.
  • The new shield effect is way to strong the same way. 
  • Suface harvestables look like they were hijacked from Candy Crush.
  • The warp "starfield" is way to pronounced and "present" (old one yes, but still..)

 

Please dial effects back, there is no need to show off all these bright colors and they really deface the game IMO

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When will you return VR for missions? Previously, we could transport other people's missions, but now it's inconvenient. A lot of my friends want to leave the game. It was thanks to the missions that my friends returned to the game this summer.

Please do not delete this great VR mechanic :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the last Q&A I asked about the spread of T4/T5 ores being deliberately pushed to the asteroids, to which the response was 'No' - Now with the deployment of Demeter, the spread of all ores seem to have been significantly reduced across all planets, but particularly T3 and above, with even T2 being a lot more rare than before the geo reset.

 

This seems to go directly against the response given in the previous Q&A, as well as significantly impacting the ability of players (especially solo) to find and establish a stable ore income of reasonable volume & diversity.

 

Short term: Has NQ considered the impact of low quanta fluidity in supporting the new tile taxes, as ppl are trying to sell ore to raise quanta, but all other ppl are also selling ore to raise quanta, so not being able to purchase listed ores - resulting in a stalling of quanta flow through the economy?

 

Long term: Has NQ considered the impact of potential ore rarity due to low extraction volumes, brought about by miners not transitioning to the new MU's (or just giving up on the game-play loop due to dis-interest), extraction rate caps from pool rates and charge caps, as well as larger orgs stockpiling to maintain gigafactorys (and potentially control market manipulation) and reduced quanta flow through the economy due to tile taxes?

And no, saying players can always take Aphelia Missions to make quanta is NOT a reasonable response, as Missions are not a game-play loop that many players want to, or are able to spend the time undertaking.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can we have an option to not publicly display territory names to other players?
I have a lot of territories claimed for auto-mining, and I want them to be organized in my tax-screen, but I don't want to let other people know what I have on my territories by clicking on it on the map and seeing a territory name.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really want to dive back into discord and reconnect with everyone but I am just too busy right now. Things should ease up again in February and I will hopefully be able to help out once more. For now, here are my questions. Pick and choose whichever you like.

 

Exploration

  • Demeter removed the main incentive for exploration. The only remaining mechanics that support this would be wreck salvaging and asteroids. I know you increased asteroid spawn rates but was anything done with the salvaging mechanic? Are their still downed ships out there to discover or were they cleared in the geo-reset?
  • I am probably not going to get an answer to this one but its worth a shot. "Fixed hide owner and DRM information when raycasting mysterious objects." What do you mean by mysterious objects and who owns these? Is this what I think it is? Did you add more of them?

Territory Mechanics 

  • After the first two weeks, is it fair to assume that territories marked inactive on the map must therefore be player HQ tiles? Are their any other reasons for tiles to be marked as inactive or any other method to distinguish regular tiles from HQ tiles?
  • Both changing the HQ state of a tile or tokenizing it can lead to instant abandonment. Are their warning messages in place for both of these scenarios?
  • How are players notified about construct requisitions? What about players with expired subscriptions can they expect an email warning?

Geography Reset

  • Everything appears to have gone smoothly and there was indeed a massive increase in client performance. Do you happen to know how it turned out on the backend? Did the server-ops team get the results they were looking for?
  • Patch notes mentioned that 8 territories on each planet are currently bugged and will not work with mining units. Could you give us a rough idea where we should exercise caution (ie: poles, equator, etc)?

Off-topic

  • NQ-Kyrios, during the earlier stages of development we saw many beautiful design sketches and concept arts. Nowadays your department is shrouded in mystery and we only get to see final renders. Does your team still make use of rough drafts? Any unpublished artwork that you can share with the community? Please tease us with some unlabeled device scribbled on a napkin.

My Thoughts on Demeter (Not a Question)

 

Before this update, new players could progress very quickly by mining and selling ore. Several even made it to other planets on their first day (something that was supposed to take a month to achieve). It was too easy to reach endgame content and that is not a good recipe for a subscription based game. Demeter slows player progression and also adds a degree of adjustability to it via the new tax based quanta sink. These changes are unpopular with existing players but it was the correct decision for the future of the game and I applaud you for it. You will of course need to add more activities to keep new players occupied, but that is likely what the Juno update is for. Keep up the good work and use the extra time you have gained post launch to stay ahead of the curve with new endgame features.

 

Oh and one more thing. A special thank you to all the NovaQuark staff that assisted with implementing the demeter excavation process.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I intend to post a few questions in a couple posts and they are all on different systems or themes so I posted multiple times so that each question or series can be narrowed down vs 15 questions in one post.

 

Q1: Can you guys add the mini game rocks into the regualr ground rock spawns so it makes rock harvesting a more viable option if every once in a while you got more than 20L per rock?

 

Mining was like a scratch off lotto tickets with every node you went after and you never knew if it was going to be a 4kl node kind of day vs tiles or nodes 12kl-1mil+kl nodes. With rocks on the ground ever single one being 20kl would be a viable option if some of these 400+/- L rocks were added to the ground rock system.

 

Q2: Why does rock harvesting not use mining talents or have its own talent tree?

 

You would assume that you are still gathering even if its static nodes vs voxel nodes and with skill / experience it you would get better at doing it like everything else in the game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q1: If this is a Civilization why did you never consider laws / rulesets for killing other players?

 

Any civilization or society has rules on killing someone with penalties and consiquences. In Du you can kill everything you want and there is no payback period if they run back to a bubble. You would think they should stay flagged for 24 hours for each kill they do in a day that makes them flagged no matter if they go to a market, their base, etc as a wanted criminal and can be pvp'd by the person they killed or their org mates. You would also think if someone is a space pirate robbing people you would cut off their access to a market while they are flagged as a criminal.

 

Q2: Can you guys build an infamy/rep system that promotes the people who pvp?

 

If you kill people you should be on the most wanted list and any time you come in contact with another ship radar it should start broadcasting your location to the whole server. If you go anti PK you should get a reputation as well. There should also be pings on a space map if you hit /sos for people in some form of trouble or /ua to put a ping up for being under attack that lasts like 30min or until the core gets taken before cutting the distress signal. Or a self destruct sequence if you type /sds then a timer like /sds200 for the number of seconds before your ship explodes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q1: Can we get mUs for dynamic cores?

 

Territories that are unclaimed have infinite ore now so it does not matter if you slap 20 miners on a ship and mine infinite ore from unclaimed territories if you make them use a fuel source (nitron, Kergon, rocket) as options to mine faster as the cost to mine that is more aggressive than static core miners but uses a fuel source to run to get ore faster while you are out waiting for scanners at least you can bring in some ore while you wait.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q1: Can you consider just making the VR system a teleport system?

 

NQ was going to add star gates which are teleports which is pretty much the same system as VR. Rather than embrace VR it keeps getting neutered into the ground and made less and less useable. VR should just embrace teleporting and use a hybrid system that uses distance calculations and requires warp cells, a tax based on distance, and or a mining unit calibration charge so you come through in one piece or dont end up at some random location. Not being able to use the VR for any practical purpose makes it a dead system that needs to be made useful again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q1: Can you consider tweaking taxes by the total ore pool and by ore present?

 

Taxes should be on the value of the property and not across the board with T1 = 100k-h per 100l/h, T2 = 150k-h per 100l/h

T3 = 200k-h, T4 = 200k-h per 100l/h, and T5 = 250k-h per 100l/h. Not all tiles are created equal and the prime tiles should cost more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q1: Can you consider tweaking the ore production per tile across the board?

 

Bare minimum all tiles need to have a base of 1000l/h-2000l/h for prime tiles. The MUs work but they will need more than an average of 500l/h. The main thing that is missing is some kind of prospecting system to make the tile better. Personally I think that players should be able to use the talent exp to make the tile better over time the more exp you put in to buy l/h mods, buying/adding/discovering other ores in the tile, or decreasing the time on 1hr down to 30mins.

 

Q2: Do you intend to add other sinks to take ore/elements out of the system tokeep the economy moving instead of selling as much as you can to make taxes each week/month?

 

Right now the only thing taking anything out of the system is what is left of destructive elements in PvP. You could make the auto miners produce whatever amount you want as long as there are material and parts sinks like destructive elements or dots on parts based on useage like the auto miner system has with efficiency and if applied to repairing due to HP loss over time by elements constantly running would keep the ore market constantly move and elements would constantly move if destructible elements was added back in along with useage based damage on any element constantly running like machines, engines, or even based on a per use damage to doors, etc.

 

You can tweak rates on ore coming into the system as you go to match the pre you can produce with loss and balance it to progression over time to account for building a base, industry, mining opperation growth/expansion, and allow people to want to enguage in PvP if they have enough to throw away at the same time. It takes a good balance to achieve but in most pvp game you get like 10x more than you need to account for acceptable losses or costly battles if you keep throwing ship after ship away in large scale battles. The time to progress and fhe time to destroy is out of sync and should get a rebalance pass.

 

That was my last question. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Someone already mentioned new player experience but I'm giving it a try to give detailed feedback. I am not new, but am currently going through the game on an alt as a new player with 0 quanta on sanc. I have 4 autominers now on Sanctuary but my tile only has 13 bauxite (others are just over 100). I automine a total of 116 ore per hour. I received 10k T1 from calibration. I can sell that to bots for 250k or less. Schematics to build M industry, parts, and refine pures is 5m or so. I can do all tutorials and get 1.5m?  That means I have access to 2m maybe.

 

I can get to space barely but will take much more time to get a ship that's able to do missions for example.

I can't buy a DSAT (18m) or schematic let alone equipment to build one in order to asteroid mine.

 

What that leaves is a waiting weeks for autominers to produce enough ore to make quanta or surface mining for 10s of hours. Even if I work my way up to mining on Alioth, still lots of afk waiting. Besides joining an org and getting free things, that's the options here. Is that intended? is there a solution in the works?   

 

Others have said get rid of early game schematics. That would help

 

To clarify, my issue with this is there's nothing to do early game because factory and asteroids have a huge quanta barrier. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The surface spawn is a messed up thing, I have areas that are in the mountains, and would have to constantly run up and down and slalom around the trees in the forest. I'm sorry, I don't see how this is fun. Now I have to do that after every calibration, no thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 1 million quanta territory tax a week has made this game no fun. Who wants to run T1 Mining units just to pay territory tax for that tile. Can we get bigger pools on T1 and have the basic mining unit L pull more l/h? I have waited to post anything to this thread until I had T1-T3 mining units working in the field. With the ore amounts those mu pull it should be easy to pay territory tax and have ore for my factor. The T1s are just insufficient and made this game go from fun to work.  Can we please store more calibration charges, have the MU maintain efficiency longer, and T1 pools bigger and T1 mu pool more ore? Other wise this game turns into a job instead of something fun to do. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't play anymore but I'll jump in on this discussion.

 

End game right now in DU seems to focus on Asteroids, but that's basically out of reach for a new player within a reasonable timeframe.  Yes I'm aware that there are public DSAT's out there but that doesn't fix the issue.  A player still needs a ship to be able to reach said asteroid but sometimes you reach the asteroid and all ore is gone.  It has already been stripped so you've wasted x amount of time getting somewhere just to feel completely demoralised once you arrive.  That combined with that fact that roids only spawn once per week is a kick in the teeth if you can't play the game on a weekend.  Most if not all safe zones roids are gone typically by the end of the weekend.

 

So what other options do new players have, Setup on Sanc, deploy auto miners and mine surface rocks until your fingers fall off?

 

I understand this was all done to improve performance, but at the detriment of actually being able to progress.  This game was fun, but it became a job one which we are paying for, something strangely odd with that concept!

 

Some obvious fixes.

 

1.  Increase mining output of units.

2.  Increase No. of calibrations stored or increase the duration that a calibrated machine lasts for as the mini game is soul destroying!

3.  Increase the volume of surface rocks, add variety.  20L per rock when clearly they are all different sizes doesn't make sense.

4.  Mining talents should affect surface rocks

5.  Remove schematics from anything that can be made in the nanocrafter or better yet anything T1.

6.  Adjust Territory tax so it's a sliding scale, 1m for T1 and the same for higher tiers makes no sense at all.

7.  Dynamic spawning of asteroids, several times per week or even everyday.  You know like in EVE where roids actually work!

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, SMALLVILLE said:

The 1 million quanta territory tax a week has made this game no fun. Who wants to run T1 Mining units just to pay territory tax for that tile. Can we get bigger pools on T1 and have the basic mining unit L pull more l/h? I have waited to post anything to this thread until I had T1-T3 mining units working in the field. With the ore amounts those mu pull it should be easy to pay territory tax and have ore for my factor. The T1s are just insufficient and made this game go from fun to work.  Can we please store more calibration charges, have the MU maintain efficiency longer, and T1 pools bigger and T1 mu pool more ore? Other wise this game turns into a job instead of something fun to do. 

just exactly that.

 

are you planning to make this new mining system less a "work" instead of a game?

with the current system we need to loging regulary to not waste charges, calibratio, profit

 

this is not fun!

 

if you still want this to be a sandbox, give us back control over mining and remove the timer based, daily login need, based gameplay!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...