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So I got the urge to resub to the game here is how it went......


bleakcon

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So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)

2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......


So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

Edited by bleakcon
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2 minutes ago, bleakcon said:


I don't know, when a company has to up prices in a beta it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that we will all be leaving sooner or later.


Was a joke... Hotel California by the Eagles. I agree with you, cause if they continue the way they are going the game will probably end up shutting down.

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Just now, Creator said:


Was a joke... Hotel California by the Eagles. I agree with you, cause if they continue the way they are going the game will probably end up shutting down.


Yeah, sorry, I did it get it but this is a somber moment, truly I did think DU had some of the best feeling of flight and space (would have loved the old skybox though) of any space game and it sucks to see it not really getting better.......Hell part of me wonder if at least pre .23 was still more fun haha

 

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2 minutes ago, bleakcon said:


Yeah, sorry, I did it get it but this is a somber moment, truly I did think DU had some of the best feeling of flight and space (would have loved the old skybox though) of any space game and it sucks to see it not really getting better.......Hell part of me wonder if at least pre .23 was still more fun haha

 


No worries, and I am in 100% agreement.

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6 hours ago, bleakcon said:


I don't know, when a company has to up prices in a beta it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that we will all be leaving sooner or later.

While this is not unrealistic to expect, I also think that the $7 pricetag was a dumb choice to begin with. 

The compare with FF does not hold much merit here really. FF can be at $10 because they know they have the numbers as far as players/subs go.

 

I can still see NQ push the price up more closer to "release" as they still have the devalued backer packs to deal with and that wil be something they will need to address before they can start taking DAC. They sold packs on the notion of game time being around $15.

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What is with space games and grind as gameplay?  Elite Dangerous is just as bad and even Eve has only about four game loops of various grindiness.

 

I suppose it's the natural consequence of having engineers create a story, which works as well as a bunch of artists building a practical engine.

 

The writing in the wall came way back when they decided to limit the game to one solar system killing, at a stroke, any exploration and discovery gameplay ("we've hidden a...oh you found it already?)

 

And it's bad for newbies AND older players who spent money on doing what they enjoyed (which in DU is building things). I ddn't play to make money.

 

So, I can make the money to keep my modest four hex area active if I sacrifice one session (of my spotty amount of game sessions) a week hauling ore to the market and checking in my mu's.  

 

This isn't play, it's work.  Every time I log on, the urge to play something quicker rewarding gets stronger.

 

Improvements?

 

More more planets, with more geography

 

allow planet features to be named by whoever holds the most hexes on it

 

allow free for all scavenging on unprotected ships (and allow protection)

 

Build NPC cities run by npcs to begin with, replacing them with players with enough vicious ambition to do it and hold onto it

 

Pay (variable) taxes to those cities that control your hex

 

Allow PC cities to set their own tax

 

Allow independent hexes (with a downside because choices)

 

Rename everything with actual names for the sake of immersion.

 

Allow players to hold the reins more and not just be fleas on the horse

---

Just off the top of my head.  Nothing above is difficult to implement.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Anopheles said:

Just off the top of my head.  Nothing above is difficult to implement.

 

 

 

 

But ... but ... that would mean the developers would have to actually develop and not expect players to do their job? .... /wink --- see my YT Video :)

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18 hours ago, bleakcon said:

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

Also remember that a new player has no knowledge of how building with voxels and all the different elements work in the game. And the element descriptions in the shop has absolutely no helpful information. I.e. before they can build a useful ship, they will need resources just to learn and make mistakes.

 

As am early test player I got the learn the fundamentals of this game with a inventory that had 9999 of everything (most fun I ever had in this game btw, but that is another discussion). And I can't even imagine how overwhelming this would be for a new player today. Having to grind quanta for every single voxel and element purchase and not even knowing for sure which elements you want and how they fit together etc.

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13 hours ago, TheNewMe said:

While this is not unrealistic to expect, I also think that the $7 pricetag was a dumb choice to begin with. 

The compare with FF does not hold much merit here really. FF can be at $10 because they know they have the numbers as far as players/subs go.

 

I can still see NQ push the price up more closer to "release" as they still have the devalued backer packs to deal with and that wil be something they will need to address before they can start taking DAC. They sold packs on the notion of game time being around $15.


Whilst I agree with your pragmatism (that if this game is to continue then player numbers either need to be high or the sub needs to be high) I would say the reason they are not attracting many new players is because their game lacks anything remotely rewarding for the new player, it only becomes rewarding if you like to horde wealth or make things, both of which aren't going to bring in the numbers needed to make this game sell.

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2 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Also remember that a new player has no knowledge of how building with voxels and all the different elements work in the game. And the element descriptions in the shop has absolutely no helpful information. I.e. before they can build a useful ship, they will need resources just to learn and make mistakes.

 

As am early test player I got the learn the fundamentals of this game with a inventory that had 9999 of everything (most fun I ever had in this game btw, but that is another discussion). And I can't even imagine how overwhelming this would be for a new player today. Having to grind quanta for every single voxel and element purchase and not even knowing for sure which elements you want and how they fit together etc.


Yeah, tbh I wonder if the price hike plus these insane barriers to entry are what NQ want in the short term, I wouldn't be surprised if they have additional cost-saving ideas in mind and want those implemented before attempting to scale the playerbase, a bit tinfoil I know but it is so annoying, I really liked playing this game but I can't justify paying this price hike when they have done nothing to warrant such a payment.

It's like they decided to create a sandbox......watched players do some 'creative' things that they didn't like and went "oh wait, no, not like that.....like this....you see isn't that better, now you get to log in, do a chore and then log out for 3 weeks minimum and then the vastness of space.....no wait, well the solar system with a varied (different colour pallettes) number of planets will be yours".

I am a little salty because I was holding out hope that auto miners and the like would be a boon to this game, instead it is just another way to force 'daily `play` '

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21 hours ago, bleakcon said:

So some of you may (MAY LOL)  know me as someone who played pretty religiously pre 0.23 and up to just before the asteroid update.

Well I left for reasons and recently I thought "hmmm I really liked flying ships and DU really scratched an itch in that department".

So I gave some thought to coming back, I looked at the updates and imagine my surprise.

What the actual [filtered] has happened to this game ?

The asteroids seem fine I guess from what I have read so I will leave that.

But it seems like you have upped the price of a subscription to $9.99 or about £7.55, you are now 14 pence cheaper than Final fantasy 14 which is currently the most popular MMO out there.

I can see how people would say "doesn't matter I hate fantasy games" but this brings it into perspective, a BETA (even this title is arguably optimistic) is charging pretty much the same for a game which is fully released, stable and has more features in terms of mini-games than DU has in its entirety.

I would not care about the price update if I had not looked at the latest update....... "oh.....my....[filtered]ing......god, I'll have whatever NQ is smoking" I thought.

1. removed land mining (actually like this personally because it gave me the worst headache and was simply boring)

2. replaced with mining units, with some kind of calibration mechanism that diminshes if you don't do it daily, by all accounts this is not a fun mini game either.
3. added taxes (seems sensible on the face of it) but what the hell, the mining units will barely cover the cost of taxes in some cases unless you have skills and calibrate daily, this sounds awfully like a job to me NQ!

Then it hit me, I remember when the devs were talking about their data costs and how terraforming was a real costly thing for them and then it hit me: none of this was done for gameplay purposes, it was done as a massive cost-saving mechanism.

Now, all of this in isolation isn't necessarily a problem but when you raise the price of a game whilst at the same time removing a part of the game that was costing you money AND replacing it with a piss-poor implementation of a 'game' (READ: job) loop then you really are starting to take the piss.

If that wasn't enough I just read that your intention for surface mining (the little rocks you can get 20l at a time for) was that they don't respawn?????????? Are you REALLY expecting new players to jump into the game, take a hex in sanc, mine for maybe 10-12 hours until they have eaten all the rocks and then simply log in each day for daily allowance until they can get a few structures only to.....login once a day to calibrate. Is this another low-key cost saving exercise? [filtered] me, it is beyond belief.

New players are going to join and quickly leave after realising they probably have to wait a number of days just to be able to do the most basic thing, which is put down a autominer, then they will somehow (with crap skills) have to turn a small profit, after a few weeks they might be able to get up into space and do some asteroid mining and then they MIGHT have a shot at actually being creative.

I don't even want to think what it would take for a new player to get into even basic industry!

I am not being selfless here, I have billions in assets and liquid quanta, it is all meaningless if new players come into the game and just go '[filtered] this, this is boring' or 'no one has time for this' which I think 90% of people are going to do given they won't be able to start building for weeks on end unless they get lucky and join a good organisation.

Let's be clear here, a good organisation is no excuse for lazy, bland 'game' loops being introduced at a snails pace for what I can only see as being done for business reasons.

If that wasn't enough all I read is "They are laying the groundwork for a wipe", tbh I believe these posts, it is crazy to think I can benefit from pre 0.23 free for all industry and have all of that carry over to release, I will be running a sweat shop consisting of newbies if this game goes live without one......


So what you have is a game that is more expensive, where a whole release has been about business cost management rather than player enjoyment, where a good proportion of the game is now about scraping money together before you can get to anything fun.

Let's talk about the fun, I haven't seen anything, not a single thing in the last two updates related to making voxel building better, no snap feature for cores, no additional tools to help make voxel building less tedious.......nothing, even the best bit of this game is still a tedious slugfest.

Can I afford to play this game: Yes,
Can I justify paying for this game: If I play a lot of mental gymnastics maybe
Can I justify sinking time into this game: No, the developers don't value their players time, simple as that.

So I will continue to check in on the game and hope to god that somehow NQ turn it around but for now it's beyond a joke.




 

Tbh I get why NQ went will the sub price increase (was ambitious and too low to begin with). You reference FF14 as a comparison but won’t that type of game have a much lower server cost? 
 

One point you highlighted is the radio active jelly baby rocks being all the same size and only giving 20L a pop. I am completely with you on this one. NQ could do much better by adding a rock size variety in to the game so experienced and new players can explore the land scape looking for more bountiful rocks / areas for bigger harvest pay outs. 

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43 minutes ago, Physics said:

NQ could do much better by adding a rock size variety in to the game so experienced and new players can explore the land scape looking for more bountiful rocks / areas for bigger harvest pay outs. 

 

But that is actual WORK. The developers would have to actually DEVELOP, create planetary FEATURES that make SENSE.
It is better to take the easy route in the form of a simple algorithm like "IF body = planet OR body = moon THEN SPAWN SAME CANDY EVERYWHERE" /s

 

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46 minutes ago, Physics said:

Tbh I get why NQ went will the sub price increase (was ambitious and too low to begin with). You reference FF14 as a comparison but won’t that type of game have a much lower server cost? 
 

One point you highlighted is the radio active jelly baby rocks being all the same size and only giving 20L a pop. I am completely with you on this one. NQ could do much better by adding a rock size variety in to the game so experienced and new players can explore the land scape looking for more bountiful rocks / areas for bigger harvest pay outs. 


I agree with you that FF14 probably has a lower server cost but I guess I still think it is cheeky for us to be in Beta (some would argue not even this) and pay a price which is akin to a AAA title that is fully released with multiple award-winning expansions.

I wasn't trying to draw a comparison to costs or anything like that; my view is it is up to NQ to manage that whilst keeping their pricing model competitive to other MMOS, something I don't believe they are doing, I believe they are raising the price out of desperation whilst spending the dev time lowering the costs at the same time by replacing tedium with a different kind of tedium; this doesn't feel right.

 

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6 minutes ago, sHuRuLuNi said:

 

But that is actual WORK. The developers would have to actually DEVELOP, create planetary FEATURES that make SENSE.
It is better to take the easy route in the form of a simple algorithm like "IF body = planet OR body = moon THEN SPAWN SAME CANDY EVERYWHERE" /s

 

I would be hesitant to blame developers as such, I expect they are being told what to do by the business, I am a developer (not games but still a developer) and I can tell you through my decade + of experience (i am not that old I swear!) that you need to hold a passion to get through the day unless you are happy with perpetual self-hatred.

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DU as it was "imagined" would support a sub-based monetization model no problem....but DU as it exists never will. Nor could it support a free to play model, really -- the game loops just aren't deep enough. 

 

As for the cost of DU, this was something they should have known on day 0. Obviously DU was going to be more expensive to run compared to the competition....so obviously that's something you need to consider as you prioritize what tech to develop and how. 

 

Unfortunately, NQ didn't do that

 

Standing your own servers is fairly industry-standard for an MMO, as is writing your own engine. Most MMOs do this -- yes, even with similar sized teams as NQ!  

 

Instead of standing their own servers, they rented them from AWS and decided to use fairly expensive AWS services like DynamoDB. 

 

I get why AWS is tempting -- it has virtually unlimited scale and a lot of great tools, but Bezos gets his cut and your control isn't as granular. Between AWS and Unigen2, NQ's ability to be efficient with their infrastructure is limited. 

 

Their server costs probably wouldn't be an issue if they had 100k subs -- but no one can believe this product will support 100k subs long-term.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if their churn rate for paying customers is 40-50% and it'll only get worse come release... 

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7 hours ago, Anopheles said:

What is with space games and grind as gameplay?  Elite Dangerous is just as bad and even Eve has only about four game loops of various grindiness.

 

I suppose it's the natural consequence of having engineers create a story, which works as well as a bunch of artists building a practical engine.

 

The writing in the wall came way back when they decided to limit the game to one solar system killing, at a stroke, any exploration and discovery gameplay ("we've hidden a...oh you found it already?)

 

And it's bad for newbies AND older players who spent money on doing what they enjoyed (which in DU is building things). I ddn't play to make money.

 

So, I can make the money to keep my modest four hex area active if I sacrifice one session (of my spotty amount of game sessions) a week hauling ore to the market and checking in my mu's.  

 

This isn't play, it's work.  Every time I log on, the urge to play something quicker rewarding gets stronger.

 

Improvements?

 

More more planets, with more geography

 

allow planet features to be named by whoever holds the most hexes on it

 

allow free for all scavenging on unprotected ships (and allow protection)

 

Build NPC cities run by npcs to begin with, replacing them with players with enough vicious ambition to do it and hold onto it

 

Pay (variable) taxes to those cities that control your hex

 

Allow PC cities to set their own tax

 

Allow independent hexes (with a downside because choices)

 

Rename everything with actual names for the sake of immersion.

 

Allow players to hold the reins more and not just be fleas on the horse

---

Just off the top of my head.  Nothing above is difficult to implement.

 

 

 

 

This really bugs me. For a so called player driven game, the players have basically 0 control.

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Its NC Soft all over. I regret the money I invested in an early stage as what we will get is not even getting close to what was told. This is about the same as buying something online for a good deal of money and getting sent a brick. Like most people here i have sent loads of positive posts or ideas in the past, but well i doubt any idea from the community was ever actually added and is still in the game. There was a time JC talked about millions of players and it actually made sense,  now with the cost reducing development plan and it looks like indeed the players are the only ones getting the negatives of the cost reductions, the whole kickstarter money asking just feels like a big scam.  

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7 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

the whole kickstarter money asking just feels like a big scam.  


I don't think it is a scam, just a mix of over ambition, and some mistakes along the way. We may not get what we were initially promised... But maybe we can make what we have suck less, and built on that? First step, stop the bleeding...

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22 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

the whole kickstarter money asking just feels like a big scam.  

 

Yeah, it's mostly a scam in general....whatever promises they make, it's 100% on you as a consumer to take legal action if you feel they have failed to deliver....and good luck proving that they never intend to fulfill their promises!  

 

Each person that contributed to KS has to make those claims separately, so your actual clout is nil. 

 

That said....JC conned the VCs that invested over $20 million a lot worse than the backers on Kickstarter. They also believed NQ was developing "cutting edge" tech that would make a single shard server work with millions of people in some grand "build whatever you want" world.

 

Strange how "cutting edge tech" translates to AWS/MongoDB/DynamoDB/Unigen2 and an obvious inability to scale even with a tiny population. I laugh now imagining DU with a million people in it, and they still have marketing speech like that on their website. That's not "aspirational" it's delusional. 

 

Unfortunately crowdfunding follows the same rules as gambling: only put in what you're willing to lose. 

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