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Why I'm Leaving DU...


Megabosslord

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3 hours ago, Zarcata said:

This is only one point of view, there are certainly many, but I would like to mention another in fairness:

There are players who have put a lot of time and money into the game, but who don't like the current state of the game or simply don't have the nerve to endure this alpha/beta any longer.
But these players would come back when the game is released, provided that there is a positive development until then. 
So do you want to just take everything away from these players or force them to sign up for a 1 month subscription to set their tiles as HQ?
Allowing these players to automatically assign their own territories and constructs there was a right decision, also because they will be potential customers to come back later.

I can understand every player who currently has no more nerves for this state of the game and just wants to wait for it to improve drastically with the release. So they themselves are quitting now...so would they like it if in two weeks NQ decides that their buildings will just disappear and be released for looting? If they never come back, they certainly can't care, but if they still have hope that the game will still develop positively from the current testing phase, it would certainly be a painful loss.

You also have to remember that not everyone has free BetaKeys, but has to pay fixed subscription fees, as if it were already a finished game and not a construction site.

 

Where is your base? I set up on Alioth when 4 hexes from a marketplace was a long way away. That inner ring of land around the ark ship is mostly long abandoned now for the reasons I described. And I’ve contacted dozens of those players. Anyone who is waiting till launch to play again has no reason to expect anything will work properly by then - given factories, ship mechanics, LUA, ore locations are already unrecognisable from a year ago.
 

But let’s say you’re right - and I still don’t think you are - it’s no excuse to announce one thing, then stealth-patch for the other with no comms. If you’re going to backflip because of a few late complaints like yours, reset the timeline for the change, explain why, and give everyone a chance to be heard - not just a few players who hang out in the forum. 

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7 hours ago, Megabosslord said:

You only skimmed the post, right?

 

Frustration with the neighbour (and it was actually several neighbours I'd tracked down, all who left a year ago with no intention of ever coming back - one who asked to be paid in Starbase to handover DU assets, all with very abrasive comments on DU and NQ), combined with waiting 9 mths for the solution, given hope, then having it deceptively taken away again, were only the final straw.

 

 

 

 

I get where you are coming from here. However at the same time i know players who has been burned just as much as you and one even physically burned the drive DU was installed on with lighter fluid and filmed it on youtube. However as Zarcata metioned players cool off and opinions change and many of the inactive players i know are now considering making a return to the game again.

 

7 hours ago, Megabosslord said:

No. It was death by 1000 cuts. 

 

Demeter screwed me. It took away the ore I'd mapped but hadn't mined yet, took away my scans (another last-minute reversal, after doing MORE scans because we were told they'd be kept). It ganked my space elevators (Caterpillars thrown out of alignment by geometry reset combined with 'manual control' crash). It trashed my base (which was high on a terraformed ramp, meaning after the geometry reset it was left floating high in the air, inaccessible, for which there was no 'excavation request' type solution despite my raising it during PTS:

 

unknown.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the ore you failed to mine that is on you. To be fair to NQ on this part they did provide a good amount of time with the advanced warning here prior to the demeter patch drop.

 

The decision on the scan wipe was 100% the right call by NQ imo. This is even if it did only slow the community down in scanning up the whole system. However I completely agree with you that NQ messed up in giving the impression scan data was safe.  Moving fowards NQ need to choose their wording more carfully as NQ and players should know last minute changes can happen, not mattering if the cause is technical or from player feedback. I'm sorry to hear about the geometry reset effecting the space elevators but the geometry reset needed to happen. As for your floating base, if terraforming would be too much of a hassle could you ask support to lower it as a compromise? Admin accounts can move statics / space cores.

 

7 hours ago, Megabosslord said:

Then I wasted hours and millions in quanta setting up mining ops that got locked up by the core overlap bug, put in 2 excavation requests that failed, had a ship tokenisation error. All this after I'd been wrestling for weeks with problems trying to get a multi-core static BP ready for sale, and gradual realising there was nothing on the horizon to improve head-aches for builders like this:

 

I still had big plans, having spent months building the giant floating island with a system in mind to convert it to space cores and build this:

 

unknown.png

 

But my base and space elevators were fragged, my support requests were getting incrementally less helpful replies (like suggesting reinstalling the game to fix what was clearly a game bug) and there was no light on the horizon that NQ were ever going to do anything to make dealing with L static and space BPs easier. If anything, it was getting harder. 

 

 

 

 

Yep! I'm completely with you on this topic. Multi-core blueprints and building detailed Multi-core structures is a complete nightmare in DU. I do hope NQ manages to implement tools in aligning blueprints because the current system is just not worth the effort or even the time risk of being off by that half voxel and dismantling and starting from scratch. Rather than even trying it it's easier to just align cores and copy and past grinding it over.

 

7 hours ago, Megabosslord said:

The only thing I had left to look forward to, was the promised abandoned subscriber tile clean-up.

 

Then a worrying thought entered my head. "What if NQ back-flip on this, like they did on scans?" I mean, surely not twice in a row, right? But to be safe, I thought I better come here and say a few words about why I thought wiping unsubbed player tiles is a good thing: 

That post felt redundant, because it had already been decided. And there are obvious reasons for it, beyond my post: Like the performance improvement of not rendering abandoned constructs - which is inevitably only going to get worse. Or the disincentive to unsubscribe on a whim and mothball in-game assets till launch.

 

Anyway, Pann had liked my Tweet saying this was my favourite thing about Demeter...

 

 vLpQz25.png 

 

Finally, a win.

 

Then, a few hours later, NQ steal-patched HQ tiles for unsubbed players. 

 

The several players around me who despised DU, who'd played for a few weeks and quit over a year ago, were protected. 

 

It was precisely at that point that I realised I had zero faith left in where DU was going. No way of knowing. No trust in any announcements made. And without that, there's just no way to plan projects on the kind of scale that I like to work. Projects that take months and hundreds of hours. 

 

That's what it really boils down to: WIthout at least a little predictability on what is coming next, or a clear process and probability for getting a feature request considered, there's no point investing any significant amount of time in the game. And predictability has dropped to zero.

 

 

NQ most likely did shuffle through all the feedback presented to them. My personal opinion here is im not surprised at all they went with the decision to protect the assets of potential returning players and i believe still that was the correct choice. However if i was honest I was a bit surprised they decided to auto-assign all 5 HQ slots rather than 1-2.

 

On a final side note. I agree that constructs being a clear hazard such as that Multi-core tower by your base should be tackled by NQ after X amount of time has passed and no progress has been made. A very good compromise solution would of been NQ using their "hide construct" feature they use on markets to remove the hazard until the inactive player returns to continue the build.

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Just now, Physics said:

So you preach on every topic you visit ?

 

Because I have waited for years for the 'game'. It never came. In fact it became less and less 'game' with every patch. That's 5+ years of my life ...

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3 hours ago, Physics said:

I get where you are coming from here. However at the same time i know players who has been burned just as much as you and one even physically burned the drive DU was installed on with lighter fluid and filmed it on youtube. However as Zarcata metioned players cool off and opinions change and many of the inactive players i know are now considering making a return to the game again.

 

For the ore you failed to mine that is on you. To be fair to NQ on this part they did provide a good amount of time with the advanced warning here prior to the demeter patch drop.

 

The decision on the scan wipe was 100% the right call by NQ imo. This is even if it did only slow the community down in scanning up the whole system. However I completely agree with you that NQ messed up in giving the impression scan data was safe.  Moving fowards NQ need to choose their wording more carfully as NQ and players should know last minute changes can happen, not mattering if the cause is technical or from player feedback. I'm sorry to hear about the geometry reset effecting the space elevators but the geometry reset needed to happen. As for your floating base, if terraforming would be too much of a hassle could you ask support to lower it as a compromise? Admin accounts can move statics / space cores.

 

Yep! I'm completely with you on this topic. Multi-core blueprints and building detailed Multi-core structures is a complete nightmare in DU. I do hope NQ manages to implement tools in aligning blueprints because the current system is just not worth the effort or even the time risk of being off by that half voxel and dismantling and starting from scratch. Rather than even trying it it's easier to just align cores and copy and past grinding it over.

 

NQ most likely did shuffle through all the feedback presented to them. My personal opinion here is im not surprised at all they went with the decision to protect the assets of potential returning players and i believe still that was the correct choice. However if i was honest I was a bit surprised they decided to auto-assign all 5 HQ slots rather than 1-2.

 

On a final side note. I agree that constructs being a clear hazard such as that Multi-core tower by your base should be tackled by NQ after X amount of time has passed and no progress has been made. A very good compromise solution would of been NQ using their "hide construct" feature they use on markets to remove the hazard until the inactive player returns to continue the build.

So that’s two calls (scans and abandoned tiles) where what you’re actually saying is NQ made the wrong call, announced it, then changed their mind at the last minute to the right call. 
 

If that’s the case, and you’re right and I’m wrong then:

 

(A) Why are the initial decisions so often  wrong - if indeed they are wrong, and it’s not that they just don’t suit you personally?

 

(B) Why announce any decisions at all? Players are only going to act on announcements, then become frustrated when they change.

 

(C) Still doesn’t explain why, when the decisions change, the back-pedalling is done quietly. Only makes it worse. I don’t know where they announced the scans reversal. I stayed up till 2am for the Demeter release, logged in, and they were just missing. A reversal should have the same airtime as the decision it is reversing. 
 

(D) You’re making a deal with the devil when you pardon sloppy stakeholder management because it suits you. Next time, when the reversal goes against your wishes, you are hoist on your own petard. 
 

(E) NQ rolling the dice on their IP like this, flinging mud at the wall to see what sticks, is reckless. In 25 yrs experience developing larger systems than NQ/DU with many more users, my shareholders would have skinned me alive for free wheeling like this with their investment. 

Edited by Megabosslord
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This is exactly why I quit also. I loved this game. Spent months building a race track and eventually earned great quanta from the location once it was finished. But I absolutely hated being lied to and treated like a commodity, rather than a customer, by the developers. 

We would have given them a million chances to get it right if they were just honest.

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13 hours ago, Megabosslord said:

So that’s two calls (scans and abandoned tiles) where what you’re actually saying is NQ made the wrong call, announced it, then changed their mind at the last minute to the right call. 
 

If that’s the case, and you’re right and I’m wrong then:

 

(A) Why are the initial decisions so often  wrong - if indeed they are wrong, and it’s not that they just don’t suit you personally?

 

(B) Why announce any decisions at all? Players are only going to act on announcements, then become frustrated when they change.

 

(C) Still doesn’t explain why, when the decisions change, the back-pedalling is done quietly. Only makes it worse. I don’t know where they announced the scans reversal. I stayed up till 2am for the Demeter release, logged in, and they were just missing. A reversal should have the same airtime as the decision it is reversing. 
 

(D) You’re making a deal with the devil when you pardon sloppy stakeholder management because it suits you. Next time, when the reversal goes against your wishes, you are hoist on your own petard. 
 

(E) NQ rolling the dice on their IP like this, flinging mud at the wall to see what sticks, is reckless. In 25 yrs experience developing larger systems than NQ/DU with many more users, my shareholders would have skinned me alive for free wheeling like this with their investment. 

Being right or wrong is completely a matter of opinion and everyone is entitled too one.
 

This also includes the general opinions held by NQ and these opinions just like everyone else’s are fluid. The whole point of feedback and discussions is to share your personal opinions and reasons behind them. If the feedback from players change NQ’s opinion on a topic then NQ always holds the right to make changes to their game as they see fit, plain and simple. Will there be choices I disagree with NQ passionately? Of course there will be!

 

We already share the opinion that NQ should of been more carful with their wording in relation to Scan data. 
 

 

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7 minutes ago, Physics said:

Being right or wrong is completely a matter of opinion and everyone is entitled too one.
 

This also includes the general opinions held by NQ and these opinions just like everyone else’s are fluid. The whole point of feedback and discussions is to share your personal opinions and reasons behind them. If the feedback from players change NQ’s opinion on a topic then NQ always holds the right to make changes to their game as they see fit, plain and simple. Will there be choices I disagree with NQ passionately? Of course there will be!

 

We already share the opinion that NQ should of been more carful with their wording in relation to Scan data. 
 

 

Right or wrong is measurable, as is everything. DU is bleeding players. Worse, they are bleeding long-time, dedicated, and influential players. 
 

NQ clearly has no plan and have gone silent. There is no excuse.

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1 hour ago, Doombad said:

Right or wrong is measurable, as is everything. DU is bleeding players. Worse, they are bleeding long-time, dedicated, and influential players. 
 

NQ clearly has no plan and have gone silent. There is no excuse.

Measurements can influence the opinion of right or wrong. However unless you measure every scenario and choice possible that is all a measurement result is, an influence on an opinion.
 

You say DU is bleeding players but again is this solely based on this topic or other factors in play? Are the other factors also drawing in new players? I truly don’t know these answers and I can take a guess neither do you. While on the subject of measurements NQ has far better data on what the current state is. Let that data influence their choices. 

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17 minutes ago, Physics said:

Measurements can influence the opinion of right or wrong. However unless you measure every scenario and choice possible that is all a measurement result is, an influence on an opinion.
 

You say DU is bleeding players but again is this solely based on this topic or other factors in play? Are the other factors also drawing in new players? I truly don’t know these answers and I can take a guess neither do you. While on the subject of measurements NQ has far better data on what the current state is. Let that data influence their choices. 

Completely disagree with your opinion on measure everything. Frankly, doing so only leads to no rudderless meandering with no strategy as you chase the number of the day.

 

Establish KPIs, what’s important, and focus on those. KPIs should be oriented to the outcome you’re seeking individually or corporately. For NQ and DU, what’s their vision and which KPIs should they set to measure and focus. Then change, measure, change as they work to achieve their objective. This should evolve over time.

 

You are right in that active players is anecdotal. That’s a number NQ will never share unless it is positive. I think it is pretty safe to say the metric is not going in the right direction given the latest exodus. That said, it is only anecdotal.

 

 

Edited by Doombad
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What I find interesting about this thread:
When I stopped playing there was a whole thread of people leaving and voicing their opinions.
However a huge part of the builder community told us to just go away and leave and play a different game because DU was made for the builders.

Now the builders are starting to cry because NQ has to cut down costs because there are not enough builders to keep the game alive.

Pretty much everybody knew that this was coming. Except NQ and the builders.

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That is an straw man argument since nobody argued against PvP.

 

The argument was always against making PvP more importation then building or any of the other 6 pillars, in a game that was sold as "make your own game" and clearly had a focus on persistent open world building in the kickstarter. I.e. make the game you sold us.

 

But the simple truth is that NQ sucks at game design for both builders and PvPers..

 

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21 hours ago, PleiJades said:

... there are not enough builders to keep the game alive.

 

Never was.

 

Its actually something I told them for years, like builders and so called industrialists and other people like this -- minority (even if vocal and often simping around).

 

Once PvPers out of game (like you them or not) -- game is mucking dead. Period.

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On 12/21/2021 at 7:16 AM, CptLoRes said:

+1000

 

And this issue is made even worse since complete openness about the dev process was one of the key promises they made during the Kickstarter.

 

Sadly Demeter revealed a new risk factor.

 

Risk factor #1 was that they'd stop caring about the stuff we'd built and wipe. This risk seemed low in early beta, but increased with the geometry reset.

 

Risk factor #2 was that they would do some kind of partial wipe (e.g.: only wipe quanta, or only allow a certain number of magic BPs) and it would become lottery whether the way you'd played and what you'd built would survive. Demeter also raised the risk here as well, with tokenistic effort to satisfy some players.

 

The new risk factor #3, is that while they might intend to preserve player-made content, they'll accidentally mess it up. After Demeter - and the shoddy excavation request system that only served a sub-set of players anyway, and then didn't work very well (my 2 excavation requests failed and there was a clear attitude that it was like they were doing us a favour). Or, the way they just bricked my space elevators, and support suggested reinstalling the game - this now seems like the most likely outcome at release.

 

"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence."
- Hanlon's Razor 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

 

Edited by Megabosslord
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On 12/21/2021 at 10:19 PM, le_souriceau said:

 

Never was.

 

Its actually something I told them for years, like builders and so called industrialists and other people like this -- minority (even if vocal and often simping around).

 

Once PvPers out of game (like you them or not) -- game is mucking dead. Period.

 

And the list of efforts NQ has made to kick PvP players out is long.

They have an interest in finally putting efforts on it now, respecting the promises to a minimum.

PvP mobs don't ask for that much by the way.
After the work we have seen them do on Demeter we know that they have the skills to do things when they want to. Now it's up to them to get started.

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I just logged in out of curiosity today ... saw that most of my territories were abandoned - and ALL the territories around me (which belonged to other players, some with big factories etc.), hundreds of them are abandoned as well .---- white tile borders everywhere - GG NQ.

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On 12/21/2021 at 10:19 PM, le_souriceau said:

 

Never was.

 

Its actually something I told them for years, like builders and so called industrialists and other people like this -- minority (even if vocal and often simping around).

 

Once PvPers out of game (like you them or not) -- game is mucking dead. Period.


 

The problem was and still is that no matter which of these minorities (builders, industrialists, PvPers, mixed players) it would not have been enough in terms of numbers.
DualUniverse, like Eve, is a small niche product and generally appeals to only a small interest group. If you want more players, you have to attract more interest groups. Listening only to PvPers would be wrong in this respect, since this group is also only a small minority, which alone is unimportant for the game. All groups together make up the game and the player group.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 12/19/2021 at 10:08 AM, Zarcata said:

This is only one point of view, there are certainly many, but I would like to mention another in fairness:

There are players who have put a lot of time and money into the game, but who don't like the current state of the game or simply don't have the nerve to endure this alpha/beta any longer.
But these players would come back when the game is released, provided that there is a positive development until then. 
So do you want to just take everything away from these players or force them to sign up for a 1 month subscription to set their tiles as HQ?
Allowing these players to automatically assign their own territories and constructs there was a right decision, also because they will be potential customers to come back later.

I can understand every player who currently has no more nerves for this state of the game and just wants to wait for it to improve drastically with the release. So they themselves are quitting now...so would they like it if in two weeks NQ decides that their buildings will just disappear and be released for looting? If they never come back, they certainly can't care, but if they still have hope that the game will still develop positively from the current testing phase, it would certainly be a painful loss.

You also have to remember that not everyone has free BetaKeys, but has to pay fixed subscription fees, as if it were already a finished game and not a construction site.

 

I was of this frame of mind for a while.  I've been watching, and waiting for a reason to come back.  However, to Mega's point, I don't trust NQ either.  I'm still watching for that miracle, but after what I've seen since I've left, I don't see them pulling this one out.  There are quite a few former players that called this game "a scam" when they left.  I argued with them for a bit, but yeah, NQ is showing these players may have been right.  Really sad.

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On 1/19/2022 at 11:04 PM, Kormolos said:

je n attends rien d interessant d une personne qui se fait appeler mega boss lord..... soigne ton ego mec, t es juste un trou du cul comme tout le monde.

Turning the discussion into an personal attack is such an elegant and classy gesture..

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On 1/19/2022 at 11:04 PM, Kormolos said:

je n attends rien d interessant d une personne qui se fait appeler mega boss lord..... soigne ton ego mec, t es juste un trou du cul comme tout le monde.

 

What does his name have to do with anything ...? Maybe, oh I don't know, he is a veteran of the game, like some of us, and unlike some others who post cheap comments and ad hominem attacks.

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