Jump to content

DEVBLOG: TRA$H TO TREASURE - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

Recommended Posts

I think NQ needs to seriously think about hiring an MMO economist.  

Spoiler

Although I'm pro-dynamic salvage and wreck exploration gameplay (been asking for it a long long time) it simply doesn't generate money.  It just pulls from the pool of existing Quanta.  (Unless these wrecks contain items that can be sold to Aphelia bots like Mission packages were after we asked for months for them- Do this now NQ before release please)

 

Right now the economy is having issues, we all know that.  Industrialists compete in the markets with each other daily, anyone producing anything has seen it.  The Market PVP meta is single directional.  How much of a loss are you willing to take?  Most items on Market 6 are below the cost to manufacture them (even with max talents), due to stockpiles of elements and no quanta.  (yes you can run mission if you have endless hours).  This state however means that the prices of elements fall daily, and even more so on weekends. (you can see this if you log any sort of data on prices for items over a period of a month).  We watched as ore prices fell not due to unheard of demand (there was more ore in the old system even with AM due to mega nodes).  Ore sells less when industrialists cap out on items and don't need it to produce more.  Less likely to buy 50kl Natron when your sitting on 40000 warp cells that you can't sell for the cost of the ore to make them.

That said, this blog title sentence is very very misleading.  None of these activities generate quanta as Gottchar said above.  But not only that, they enter into the market in the same way industrialists do.  So now people with factories will compete prices with salvagers.  More elements enter the economy, the lower the prices go do to the supply being to high, with little to no demand.  Many players have said its not the demand that is the issue, it is that no one has any money to buy. (some people have a lot of money btw, but no need for items)

 

NQ claimed they needed a way to "remove quanta from the economy" aka Quanta sinks due to mission money and too much quanta being in the economy.  (their original mistake with VR turn ins and multi-accounts)

Taxes have destroyed many players livelihoods in DU, many have quit or left, or pulled their beautiful buildings out and moved to a HQ tile. (Some people had huge structures across multiple tiles)

Auto-mining is only really good for those who can multi-account due to the charges/minigame and calibration loss timers (not fair set for casual-medium activity players)

 

TLDR:  So NQ's plan is to increase the number of players in the market selling elements/voxel and decrease the amount of quanta in the economy(taxes).  How is any of this FUN?

 

_____Suggestions_____

 

1. With the addition of core damage, remove lives from elements entirely. They die, they die. People need new ones. (Element sink)
2. With all the VFX team's hard work already, why not add artificial quanta sinks (Avatar parts/colors/effects) - Glowing Red eyes Only 50m quanta from Aphelia, green space engines Only 25 million from Aphelia, Smoke/Fog Emissions for builders 10m,  etc... (no impact on market economy/player lives, simply removes quanta in bulk from the economy)

3. FORCE DISTRIBUTION OF ITEMS OUT OF MARKET 6 - This can be done by limiting the quantity of items available in market containers.  (only 100 XL space engines per market for example)  This would allow other nearby markets to gain stock of items due to overflow.  Or artificially cause this through "bot movement orders" where the system moves these items to other markets across the system but provide the original quanta to the sale at the location the item was dropped off at. (market linking)  (how hard is it to live on Ion, nothing sells there)

3b. Put a Minimum sale price-  For example:  Remote Controller 10k Quanta. (or whatever the base cost is to create with T1 skills) This allows players to control the upscale but not completely destroy the market by selling at a loss just to earn a quanta.

        -Second note, put any order list at minimum price into a queue to purchase (with a max quantity per sell order.). This means that if 100 people queue their minimum priced items, eventually they will all make a sale, this can help spread out the wealth in the economy and prevent massive groups from completely dominating the market and prevent new industrial minded players from not doing industry because they can't hope to make any money until they are max talents and can undercut the big guy or leave the game entirely.

4. Put more bots on moons of various planets that only buy ore that cannot be mined in that cluster.  (ie: Bot buys Acanthite on planets (including their moons) that you can't mine Acanthite on) This would create a "trade/haul" aspect of the game if people want to sell their ore, they have to haul it. If they don't want to haul it, they can create a mission for someone else to haul it for them.  

 

All of these options open fun to the gaming community and feel less like work and less inappropriate like taxes. (yes taxes need to be a thing to ensure tile transference but there are other ways that games do this successfully without making things feel like work. 

 

Final remark:  NQ we love your hard work and dedication to this game and we know that creating DU is your full time job.  But it shouldn't have to be ours too, we all want to come home from the stress of life/work/etc and unwind and relax in a game we love.  Not come home to our 2nd job.  We want to love playing DU, not be full of anxiety for not playing.

 

 




 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear NQ team,

 

The "Tra$h to treasure" concept is a welcomed change, as this would bring new game loops into play (salvaging and exploration) and reduce the load at markets. However, I would suggest to never despawn constructs after they enter the abandoned state outside of market areas. For one, the many abandoned constructs contribute a lot to the sense of a populated world. There is sometimes even this post apocalyptic feeling, which fits into the lore, as not everybody would survive on a foreign planet due to the many threats to human life. So the abandoned settlements create a genuine atmosphere and are an asset to the game world I would prefer to keep. It would be great to find an abandoned ship somewhere in the desert five months from now that nobody else found (or wants). Not because of the quanta, but because of the exploration aspect. The wrecks so far were sadly not the success I hoped, since they are so few and impossible to find. If anything, I'd suggest lower their value to a minimum and let them respawn randomly in higher quantities everywhere. 

 

Another thing is the risk that abandoned constructs bring. Many hate the tall towers, but these are one of the very few things that brings some risk and fun to the flying. They could become a problem when they don't load on time, but this is a technical challenge I hope you can solve with time. If anything, increase the render distance even more, so we can see all constructs from far away. However, without these constructs, the flying will become a lot more boring. I know a lot of folks use popular autopilot scripts and prefer to take the back seat, but I am sure even more enjoy the flight physics and like to pilot manually. To them, having to avoid some obstacles is a welcomed gameplay loop and the more the risk, the more the fun!

 

Have a great day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  

On 1/22/2022 at 1:50 AM, Kronius said:

The containers we have within 250m of markets enable group gameplay with others in our Org across timezones

Any of your org members can access the containers on your tile at any time. Which means any of your members can then fly it to the market, at any time zone. And any of your other members can then VR to your ship, at any time zone. And any member can then fly the ship back to your base, again, at any time zone. 

 

21 hours ago, Zireaa said:

lose everything because they stop playing for a bit

Maybe don’t stop playing for a bit while your construct with all you own is parked on the market. Just generally don’t park on the market unless you are there to bring or fetch something.

 

21 hours ago, Zireaa said:

fuel consumption

People ask all kinds of things, usually "how does my ship look" or "why can’t I use this or that?". What they do no ask is "how can I safe on fuel?". Military engines and vertical boosters are the default, fuel prices are dirt cheap. I sell about 4x as many military engines compared to maneuver, and at least 10x as mane maneuver still compared to freight engines. If people wanted to safe a lot of fuel, they could. I happily VR to your ship and tell you how to safe a lot of fuel.

 

18 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

With the addition of core damage, remove lives from elements entirely

With the amount of bugs around, it would overwhelm support with tickets and requests. Currently most players only ask for GM help if they can’t repair bug related damage themselves within 5 minutes. If I lose a single engine to a bug and cant just repair it, I will contact support. We already had that.

 

 

18 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

only 100 XL space engines per market for example

So I might fly to the market and find out I can not sell my engines there? or I know the limit for an item and just push it to the max, now nobody can compete with me, unless people buy my overprized items.

 

18 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

the system moves these items to other markets across the system but provide the original quanta to the sale at the location the item was dropped off at

So I put 100 XL engines for 5M each on the market, now my buddy does the same, and mine are auto-sold, I like it. All of this can be abused so hard.

 

18 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

minimum price

And what about storage fee? So people have to guess how long the "queue" is and pay the fee accordingly. The minimum prices for items would also have to be constantly changed by NQ, due to fluctuating ore prices. They did not do this for the 10 UEF store ships, which now essentually cost 4x as much as they did a few month ago (same quanta price, but quanta currently has 4x the buying power). And you want to set a minimum price? Imagine that minimum price is 80k for a basic atmo engine L, if ore bots run dry and ore prices dip below 25q/L, people can now no longer use the markets, because the minimum price is too high, and people with dispensers can sell them for the "real" price.

 

 

18 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

Put more bots

We need less regulation, not more!
There would be more proper hauling going on if player missions didn’t have to compete with the aphelia missions. Prior to ore bots people would generally ship ore from A to B. Prior to schematics people would have factories on all planets.
All of the fencing, forcing, botting and other restrictions and NPC competition mean the markets and economy are far more forced and overall worse then it was prior to .23.

Get rid of ore buy bots, so that we can finally know the true prices of ores again, but also massively reduce tax. Or, as has been suggested many times now, have different territory states, so you can have it active but not run mining units, for a vastly reduced fee. 

 

5 hours ago, enjeyy said:

never despawn constructs

We all know how annoying it can be to take apart a construct and still look for that last voxel or glass panel, and that is on our own constructs. When taking apart constructs that were abandon, you grab what you can, and if it takes more than 20 seconds to look for the last part missing for grab the core, you leave the core where it is.

You imagine some dreamy ruins and ships with most engines missing. What would happen is pointless radar contacts or cores with 20 voxels and some broken elements hanging in midair making landing hard. I took a requisitioned factory building apart and the walls where thick and had lumi, the roof was a 1 thick layer of alu of a shitty colour, guess what is still standing there now.

It looks neither alive, nor abandoned, not like a ruin, it is a roof hovering in midair

 

18 hours ago, DekkarTV said:

Not come home to our 2nd job

well I agree there. Please slow down calibration charge gain but also calibration loss. So that we get the same ore as before, can only have the same amount of units running, but calibrate half as often.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Gottchar said:

  ...What would happen is pointless radar contacts or cores with 20 voxels and some broken elements hanging in midair making landing hard...

 

Yes, you are totally right here. I guess it's about time we get a function on right click "disassemble construct" or at least "highlight all elements and voxels"... And regarding remaining scraps, I suggest gravity gets enabled, so these rooftops fall to the ground and look more like ruins. To each their own, I imagine there would be some broke folks who gather all materials to sell or build, or even bored orgs who create a "clean up" company, why not some missions as well.

 

My point is, there is by far not enough stuff to explore and find in the world, which pushes the explorer type players away, so why reduce it even more on purpose? Solutions to the very much valid points you make can be found.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Q: Why does NQ always want to hand all your hard work over to other people?

 

NQ calls people's builds and hard work trash which is kinda insulting on its face but like anything else why do they not simply just turn it into a golden blueprint that can only be placed on their territory so players do not just respawn it back onto the pad or treat the pads like a dockable construct in which once the construct has been turned into a golden blueprint cannot land on the market pad it was compacted from?

 

Or just compact it into a golden blueprint and impound the construct via a script that does this automatically with a repo vendor or screen near the market keosks that charges rent via number of days?

 

NQ has done quite a lot of damage to the game and some people might be playing other games since they could be waiting for progress and why does NQ not have a system to notify people when patches like demeter or panacea drop where you are potentially going to lose your base or constructs via en email or text? Kinda bogus if you ask me?

 

Q: Why does NQ always go with the free candy approach to salvaging?

 

If NQ spent as much time with systems like salvaging as they do routinely trying to cut people's airbrakes, obstruct them, or nerf PvP into oblivion it might be a decent system, but as it stands it seems like they are just handing out jackpots of ore, elements, or bidding wars for ships which again compounds the problems of wrecking the economy even faster by doing so.

 

Nq again just seems to want to hand out free lunch as a bait and switch to just bait people into PvP and why make them wrecks instead of making players fight somekind of rudimentary PvP script that will fire on players that come to check it out and force the player to risk something to get the rewards and reward based on how much danger since NQ can break their own rules and create a wall of railguns with a huge jackpot of ore if they wanted or make armadas you have to actually "wreck" to loot them.

 

 

Its kinda dumb that NQ does everything they can to not introduce NPCs or rudimentary NPC scripts for PvP, Travel, etc to make this work and there are so many scripts they could use that requires nothing more than making the actors or flags to make their scripts persistant vs 1km and have ships, weapons platforms, space stations, ship fleets you have to fight in order to just cash in your jackpot lotto ticket rather than just handing over "Free Loot" because it sounds cool and NQ thinks we need free candy or a cookie.

 

If NQ put as much thought into things like this as they do for cutting peoples airbrakes every chance they get, Obstructing people forno reason, or nerfing PvP this might actually be a fun game. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

During the unsubscribe process, players will be reminded that their constructs will be in danger of becoming abandoned. When the constructs lose ownership, a blueprint will be placed in the owner’s inventory should they choose to return to Helios at a later date.

 

Some builders create constructs that are of a limited run. If I'm interpreting this correctly, this could allow more copies of a construct to exist than the builder originally intended.

 

Quote

SPECIAL RULES FOR MARKETS 

A modified version of IAR will be used on Aphelia territories, including all market zones.

 

Please don't back down from implementing this - some people have been pushing to keep their constructs in perpetuity because it makes the game "feel alive" -- I think it's the opposite, when i visit the market and it's the same ships parked there week after week and eventually shoved to the side by a GM it looks more dead than alive. I want a game where ALL ships parked somewhere means an actual person has been there recently.

 

Quote

Each time a construct is unclaimed, whether due to an owner’s inactive game account or if abandoned via PvP, a one-month countdown to decay is set and is visible to everyone. If no one salvages the construct, it will be permanently removed from the game.

 

Love it. Finally a way to get rid of all these constructs with broken res pads, micro voxels, 0-element-lives cores that no one can fix or find. Also, screw those damn AGG towers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/22/2022 at 2:30 PM, Zireaa said:

I don’t think a

player who has spent months or years gathering supplies should lose everything because they stop playing for a bit it should be packed up and put in a special inventory they can be reclaimed when they start playing again as far as salivate it sounds like a good idea but if I’m required two fly all over looking

i think fuel consumption needs two be reduced fuel use is Riley bad in this game in my opinion 

Quick question - did you train up the skills to reduce fuel consumption in the Piloting tree?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Zireaa said:

yes 

Ok cool, just curious.  Generally, I agree with you, but I know from experience that military engines, which are wildly popular, chew through the fuel compared to the other types.  They have less thrust though, so there's always the trade off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, OrionSteed said:

Ok cool, just curious.  Generally, I agree with you, but I know from experience that military engines, which are wildly popular, chew through the fuel compared to the other types.  They have less thrust though, so there's always the trade off.

yes i only use military two i just think fuel use should be less as we go two explore moor i barley like two fly unless i have two especially with a howler  it is a space game and it feels like im always running two get fuel and a L tank costs like  millions two fill  i think the Balice needs two be looked at again  its like 2 trips from sanctuary  two alioth and im empty i will say i recently added Anty gravity and its helping a bit 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Zireaa said:

yes i only use military two i just think fuel use should be less as we go two explore moor i barley like two fly unless i have two especially with a howler  it is a space game and it feels like im always running two get fuel and a L tank costs like  millions two fill  i think the Balice needs two be looked at again  its like 2 trips from sanctuary  two alioth and im empty i will say i recently added Anty gravity and its helping a bit 

Again, if you think fuel is expensive, use a more fuel efficient ship.

If you fly multiple trips to Alioth from Sanct daily, with mil engines, and carry an AGG around at all times and who knows what else, it is understandable you need a lot. 

I wish fuel was far more expensive or more was used, so people would actually care about consumption more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Gottchar said:

Again, if you think fuel is expensive, use a more fuel efficient ship.

If you fly multiple trips to Alioth from Sanct daily, with mil engines, and carry an AGG around at all times and who knows what else, it is understandable you need a lot. 

I wish fuel was far more expensive or more was used, so people would actually care about consumption more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Gottchar said:

Again, if you think fuel is expensive, use a more fuel efficient ship.

If you fly multiple trips to Alioth from Sanct daily, with mil engines, and carry an AGG around at all times and who knows what else, it is understandable you need a lot. 

I wish fuel was far more expensive or more was used, so people would actually care about consumption more.

Sounds dumb two me and not fun but you are welcome two you're opinion but I disagree 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • NQ-Nyzaltar unpinned this topic
  • 9 months later...

I still don't understand the verbiage about the Sanctuary tiles.. if we leave our accounts inactive for over 90 days, do we also lose our static/dynamic constructs after 90 days ?   This is a bad move if so, it will guarantee that old players will not return.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At this point NQ seems to have no choice in the matter.  Running an MMO is one of the most expensive game formats possible.  Deleting stuff keeps some people away but that isn't the only thing turning people off.

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...