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NQ-Deckard response to "negotiation" attempts in DUscord


blazemonger

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Today is my day off, but I'm keeping an eye on things a little bit. So I'm making this very brief before I join my partner for breakfast.

 

However, I want to be very clear that this isn't an offer. It's not something we are bartering with the community with a back and forth. We heard you feedback, we've looked at what systems we can adjust to allow for a better spread that won't our hurt our construct collectors as much while also not biting into the health of the game further down the line as everyone accumulates more and more stuff and as such we've notified you of the changes that we will be making to better suit everyone.

 

I want to make it painfully clear that just because we listen to our community and we take your feedback on board, that its not some form of haggling procedure that is the norm. This change ultimately will potentially have a worse outcome for the long term development of the game as the costs on our end our higher than the other option, but its what we feel we can commit to. In short, it won't be going beyond 100 personal constructs per player, and we won't be going beyond 100 org slots per player.

 

If you really want to pay more to get more slots, we won't stop you by way of an alt as it helps by form of contribution to the costs of maintaining those slots. However what you're suggesting is a whole new interlinked system that we would need to build plus a whole new subscription type, plus a way of differentiating that doesn't exist currently. So that won't be here in the near future if we even decide to do that at all.

 

For all the people who are going to go nuts over this message as per usual perceiving this as some effort to make DU pay to win, that's not at all what we are doing or want to do...

 

No, we are not trying to incentivise the use of alts, no this isn't some kind of meta for us to make you all poor more money into the game than you already are. It's to make sure that a players account doesn't end up costing more than what it contributes towards its running costs.

 

Because if you really want to see Dual Universe be here for years to come, it needs a player to self support the operating costs of its existence. The previous "hard cap" per player was just below 1400 constructs. That's just simply not sustainable if everyone did that. So we have to find a balance that does work. A single organization can still support those numbers, but it needs other players to aid in its support.

 

On that note, after writing that my darling partner has made me breakfast and I'll be joining her. So I wish you all a wonderful Sunday.

 

 

All I can say here.. THANK YOU @NQ-Deckard

 

Finally, someone at NQ draws a line and makes it very clear that enough is enough without laying blame, using fluffy or borderline condescending wording. This is the direct and clear communication we have not seen much from NQ AND it has some very defining reasoning in the part I put in bold in the quote.

 

I personally think that the new numbers overhoot even and could have been set lower but is NQ is comfortable with this, even when it already hits their cap in what they can afford, then I'll take it.

 

Whether you like it or not, from what I'm seeing, this is what NQ is willing to give us and they provide what I consider fair reason for the decidion. It's now on you as a player to accept it and move on or not and.. move on.

 

So I suggest we all do that..

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4 hours ago, blazemonger said:

 

 

All I can say here.. THANK YOU @NQ-Deckard

 

Finally, someone at NQ draws a line and makes it very clear that enough is enough without laying blame, using fluffy or borderline condescending wording. This is the direct and clear communication we have not seen much from NQ AND it has some very defining reasoning in the part I put in bold in the quote.

 

I personally think that the new numbers overhoot even and could have been set lower but is NQ is comfortable with this, even when it already hits their cap in what they can afford, then I'll take it.

 

Whether you like it or not, from what I'm seeing, this is what NQ is willing to give us and they provide what I consider fair reason for the decidion. It's now on you as aplayer to accept it and move on or not and.. move on.

 

So I suggest we all do that..

 

 

The funny part is they never developed the escape pods/lifeboats. So when this ship goes down due to the money being sucked out everyone who stays will be a short lived experience.

 

Fiar, unfair suck it or leave it there are options and other approaches they could, can, and have always had the ability to change for years if they knew what they were doing. They could still save themselves if they wanted at any time. They honestly dont want to.

 

It never had to come down to this.

 

A Captain Always Goes Down With His Ship - GIF on Imgur

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I preferred the original core numbers, the success of the game is driven by the ability to invest in new context, so that should be prioritised.

 

Also, 25 large cores is a huge amount of space, bigger than any building game I’ve played before (other games tend to have different types of limitations in place) and would have been fine, if people hadn't been spoilt with near infinite cores. 

 

I suspect if there is a wipe they will drop it further then.

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I did expect that NQ would adjust the initial numbers but thought it was a bit quick and from there, too much of a correction. I understood where the need for the change comes from, and it makes sense. A lot of the noise and upheaval was caused by a less than well written initial devblog, followed by a rather questionable second one in tone. Much of the "pain" NQ has is inflicted purely by themselves through poor communication and ambiguity in their statements and announcements.

 

This "outburst" by Deckard, while very "rough around the edges" is not that at all. It is clear, lays down both the "law" and explains in a brief but concise way why. There will always be those that still try to argue the point or "reason" with NQ for a better condition towards their interests but I think the way Deckard put is was very clearly "this is what it is, there is nothing more to come".

And I also agree the initial numbers were fine, I expected NQ to move a bit to maybe 75 cores in total for a player who plays alone and maybe move it a bit more once implemented, but I’ll take the 200 cores :) ..

 

And lastly, while yes, this change is clearly rooted in the need to cut (potential future) cost but at the same time, I think this action was always going to happen as it makes sense that the previous cap of 1400 cores as said by Deckard is not sustainable if you run a game with tens of thousands of players which is what NQ must design for if the game will eventually have a chance. 

 

So it's actually a change which shows that they are in fact starting to have a more long term outlook on how the game requirements will grow over time and while we're not quite there, that is a sign of progress for me. 

 

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4 hours ago, blazemonger said:

I did expect that NQ would adjust the initial numbers but thought it was a bit quick and from there, too much of a correction. I understood where the need for the change comes from, and it makes sense. A lot of the noise and upheaval was caused by a less than well written initial devblog, followed by a rather questionable second one in tone. Much of the "pain" NQ has is inflicted purely by themselves through poor communication and ambiguity in their statements and announcements.

 

This "outburst" by Deckard, while very "rough around the edges" is not that at all. It is clear, lays down both the "law" and explains in a brief but concise way why. There will always be those that still try to argue the point or "reason" with NQ for a better condition towards their interests but I think the way Deckard put is was very clearly "this is what it is, there is nothing more to come".

And I also agree the initial numbers were fine, I expected NQ to move a bit to maybe 75 cores in total for a player who plays alone and maybe move it a bit more once implemented, but I’ll take the 200 cores :) ..

 

And lastly, while yes, this change is clearly rooted in the need to cut (potential future) cost but at the same time, I think this action was always going to happen as it makes sense that the previous cap of 1400 cores as said by Deckard is not sustainable if you run a game with tens of thousands of players which is what NQ must design for if the game will eventually have a chance. 

 

So it's actually a change which shows that they are in fact starting to have a more long term outlook on how the game requirements will grow over time and while we're not quite there, that is a sign of progress for me. 

 

 

Its just short sighted in the sense that it might keep them in the black in the short term but the subs they will lose due to this will in 1-3 months time put them again back into the same situation or worse. 

 

What are they going to do then?  Voxel complexity hard limits? Target industry? More nw avondonment features?

 

They could have said we needed to cut down on all the constructs of people who arent paying us and even if you are an alpha backer or beta key player you are the ones who are going to be limited. If you have an active sub you get 200/200 for being an active paying customer or that there could be different tiers so that if you have a T2 sub you get 400/400 cores for $20 a month and it keeps doubling from there since as soon as you are inactive it pretty much gets avandoned anyhow so getting more for your money is mutually beneficial for NQ and the players.

 

It was dumb of NQ to ever offer Alpha backers a totally free account and beta players free accounts until launch and is part of the reason this is the way it is currently.

 

If the problem is money then they need to really start making money in either tier subs to entires people to spend more to get more or actually having some kind of fluff shop if not a full on cash shop.

 

Either way they need to find new sources of income or they keep cutting off segments of the population off from wanting to play their game which makes their situation worse over time and creates more of a cycle of cutting more costs and spending all their time trying to punish, grief, and restrict their dwindling player base.

 

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Warlander said:

Its just short sighted in the sense that it might keep them in the black in the short term but the subs they will lose due to this will in 1-3 months time put them again back into the same situation or worse. 

 

I think that is less an issue here. This is one of those things that should have been implemented a long time ago but with JC in control it was never even considered as NQ never thought ahead more than 3-6 months nor seemed to consider the cost factor much.  The argument that a cap of 1400 cores per player, as Deckard now brought up, is certainly a potential problem waiting to happen is fair and whoever thought that this number was fine when it was put in clearly lacked the foresight of multiplying it with tens of thousands of players needed to carry the game. The problem there is probably the lack of a project manager who will question anything that is being done in game against the cost and viability for the company.

I think this is more a matter of resource cost in the server design that drives the decision than actual financial impact. That the two use the same word "cost" can get confusing quickly.  Regardless of how much money you have, the amount of resources a single player can use/deploy will directly impact your server performance and the amount of financial resources you need to support that. Whether you have the money to pay for that or not, what a player contributes in subscription revenue must be balanced against that. Setting the initial sub at $7 was another mistakes JC made which set him up for failure.

By upping the core count now, NQ will need to make further choices down the line to keep that balance and that is the point Deckard made very clearly. Those choice will either be further limiting in game options or increasing subscription cost.

 

To be honest, that NQ offered existing subs the same rate as long as the continue their subscription seems to me to be a good indicator that the current sub count is not all that great and has no real impact on NQ’s bottom line (and they plan another increase at release). And I doubt that whoever subbed or resubbed after that at the current rate will have much of that either. Personally, I really think they should go to $15/month on release, if not sooner, to balance that and to create more headroom in what they can accommodate server side.

 

I really believe that if they can clearly establish how this increase justifies maintaining the existing limits and options in game, this will work out just fine, Deckard may without realizing it, actually have set this up nicely in his response.

 

 

JC's biggest mistake IMO was he seems to never have done the math for the long term and on top of that, the limited budget NQ has always had to work with really called for very strict budgeting on several fronts, something he clearly did not do. And when he made his final mistake in thinking he could just open up the game at "beta", all of this came crashing down as server cost went through the roof, draining NQ's capital. And JC did not have the skillset to really address this, and I feel panicked and made more mistakes. Only once he left and people who have the skillset to manage this got a chance to do so was NQ able to make the needed corrections but by now, these started affecting gameplay in a way that broke expected abilities and behaviour. And that is where we are now.

 

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I like the brutal honesty too.  

 

I don't know exactly what was being discussed on Discord.  So i might be missing something.  But on the subject of Alts, I think there are a lot of people who are opposed to Alts because of the added complications and stress.  Personally, i can only handle one Alt, if i have any more i just won't get around to logging on the 3rd account, half the time, it's just too much fuss.  It's not how i want to spend my time in the game.  So i can understand someone not wanting to deal with an Alt.  

 

It would be so much less complicated to be able to purchase additional core slots for your main account.  

 

For some people Alts are also associated with paying for an advantage.  But in this case, it's really not paying for an advantage, it's paying for more of the product that NQ is selling.    

 

I think there could be a decent number of people who would be a lot more likely to spend more money on additional core slots, then they might be willing to spend on additional accounts.

 

 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

I don't know exactly what was being discussed on Discord.


 

I had simply made a request and received an answer accordingly:

The question: 
 

Quote

 

So, now that the second proposal from NQ with the core limit changes is on the table, and they do look better than the first offer. It remains to be seen whether the offer will be left as it is or whether further negotiations will take place. I would very much like to have more private character slots to choose from, the 100 are simply too few for players who want to play the game over a very long period of time. Some already have well over that limit. Of course, one could now say that a player could also -again- create an org at the same time in order to get the other 100 slots, but that wouldn't solve the problem of players only creating organisations because of the slots.

I therefore ask NQ to drastically increase the number of private character slots so that the org slots do not have to be used for private cores. At the same time, attention should be paid to how intensive the talents are designed to be, so that they are worth the skilling and the points compared to an organisation. (Currently, many players are skilling an organisation and not the character slots, because the org is faster, cheaper and allows far more slots).

I also ask that NQ introduce a separate "builder subscription" due to the cost intensity, which offers far more free building core slots, but also costs 5,-€ more per month as an example.

 

 

 

Die Antwort von NQ-Deckard:

 

Quote

 

NQ-Deckard — heute um 11:58 Uhr
Today is my day off, but I'm keeping an eye on things a little bit. So I'm making this very brief before I join my partner for breakfast.
However, I want to be very clear that this isn't an offer. It's not something we are bartering with the community with a back and forth.
We heard you feedback, we've looked at what systems we can adjust to allow for a better spread that won't our hurt our construct collectors as much while also not biting into the health of the game further down the line as everyone accumulates more and more stuff and as such we've notified you of the changes that we will be making to better suit everyone.
I want to make it painfully clear that just because we listen to our community and we take your feedback on board, that its not some form of haggling procedure that is the norm.
This change ultimately will potentially have a worse outcome for the long term development of the game as the costs on our end our higher than the other option, but its what we feel we can commit to. In short, it won't be going beyond 100 personal constructs per player, and we won't be going beyond 100 org slots per player. If you really want to pay more to get more slots, we won't stop you by way of an alt as it helps by form of contribution to the costs of maintaining those slots. However what you're suggesting is a whole new interlinked system that we would need to build plus a whole new subscription type, plus a way of differentiating that doesn't exist currently. So that won't be here in the near future if we even decide to do that at all.

For all the people who are going to go nuts over this message as per usual perceiving this as some effort to make DU pay to win, that's not at all what we are doing or want to do...
No, we are not trying to incentivise the use of alts, no this isn't some kind of meta for us to make you all poor more money into the game than you already are.
It's to make sure that a players account doesn't end up costing more than what it contributes towards its running costs. Because if you really want to see Dual Universe be here for years to come, it needs a player to self support the operating costs of its existence. The previous "hard cap" per player was just below 1400 constructs. That's just simply not sustainable if everyone did that. So we have to find a balance that does work. A single organization can still support those numbers, but it needs other players to aid in its support. 

On that note, after writing that my darling partner has made me breakfast and I'll be joining her. So I wish you all a wonderful Sunday. 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Zarcata said:

So, now that the second proposal from NQ with the core limit changes is on the table

 

Yikes.  was that like a bit you were doing? or roleplay?  Why pretend that you're in a negotiation like that?   ?

 

 

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1 hour ago, Atmosph3rik said:

 

Yikes.  was that like a bit you were doing? or roleplay?  Why pretend that you're in a negotiation like that?   ?

 

 

There is the developer let's call him NQ
There are investors, i.e. those who support the developers with a lot of money, but then also want to earn money from it.
There are players, let's call them customers, and thus at the end of the chain actually those who are at the beginning of the chain.

It's always a kind of balance of developer-investor and customer. If one of the three pillars is gone or weakens, the construct collapses. That a kind of "negotiation" has taken place over the cores, clearly this is assessed as "no" in order to save the face of the developers. Nevertheless, the customer's request to provide more cores for gaming was met. Customer orientation is very important in many areas. Without customers, there is no income. Without income, no investors who then want to enrich themselves from the profit. Who would buy shares if a company went bankrupt? Unless, that is, one secures a majority and takes over the company.

But hey, it doesn't really matter, the investors here are not directly interested in DualUniverse, but in the technology behind it....which I find interesting as a customer and as an investor, but at the moment I don't believe that it can really cope with masses or that it can even be affordable for masses.

 

But, to answer your question again, NQ has opened the topic for the forum. They revealed their idea with the core limitation to us and we should express our opinion about it. Many players did that and it was taken into account.

So in the second modified form, the players' opinions were taken into account and at the same time we were asked again to give our opinion and have a discussion about it. I took this accordingly and participated in the discussion again. That this discussion now promptly ends with the fact that one does not want any opinions or further discussions, although this was formulated in the forum, can be seen as one likes. Since Deckard has now made it clear that the maximum number of slots is 100/100. So basically any further discussion is superfluous, right?


 

Quote

Hello Noveans, as yesterday's discussion thread was so lively, we would like to open a new thread to hear your feedback on our planned revisions.


So if our feedback had no weight, I would save my valuable time here in the forum, no problem.

Edited by Zarcata
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1 hour ago, Atmosph3rik said:

Yikes.  was that like a bit you were doing? or roleplay?  Why pretend that you're in a negotiation like that?   ?

 

I think the intent of the post got lost in translation and the (slight) frustration on the part of Deckard with some of the (similar) comments may have caused him to overlook that. 

 

  

7 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

It would be so much less complicated to be able to purchase additional core slots for your main account.  

 

For some people Alts are also associated with paying for an advantage.  But in this case, it's really not paying for an advantage, it's paying for more of the product that NQ is selling.    

I could see dynamic cores be up for a P2W argument for many, even when I'd agree with you that this is not the case.

 

What could be a possibility would be to make such an option payable with DAC only, that way you can open up the opportunity to buy DAC in game and then use that DAC to buy slots which in turn removes the whole P2W argument as it becomes an advantage available to anyone, regardleess of whether you can spend RL$$ on it or not.

 

The problem with this though is that it would need to be a recurring payment and the logistics around that may make it too complicated to implement in a feasible way. 

 

I do not dislike the idea thouhg and it may be something for NQ to consider.

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? Juicy stuff, I'm glad I check up on the forums once in a while for entertaining gems like these.

 

Also there's seems to be people who publicly quit this game that still play ?

 

The game has been going well over the past year I see, looking forward to the forums throughout this year and taking bets if it will last the whole year lol.

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NQ will obviously have the last say in how they make DU, but there will also ALWAYS be some form of negotiation going on between NQ and players (costumers).

 

The simple truth is that NQ is making a product in the form of a game, and the goal of any product is to attract customers. So whenever NQ makes changes that makes enough players react and potentially leave, they are forcing NQ to backtrack and mitigate the damage as demonstrated very recently. Aka a form of negotiation albeit slow and very inefficient which leads to NQ bleeding more players then necessary.

 

And it should not be necessary to point out that negotiation is a good thing (for both parties), and it is basically what we have been asking for all this time in the form of NQ listening (and reacting) more to feedback.

 

And when negotiations break apart the end result is usually not positive, as reflected by the DU player count..

 

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I see a lot of people here are easily convinced. Only took NQ 1 time to be a little bit honest and lots of people agree like slaves.

And peoples also believe that it is the complete truth, while im convinced its not. I think a expensive and difficult project like the vertex tool is costing more money than it will bring in. But hey, lets introduce that and cut away something else!!

 

This is not a problem that nobody could not see coming, why such a drastic rule now? They could have said in July: in a year with release, there will be a core building cap, so dont go overboard with your builds. But they act like its something they had never seen coming.

Everybody knew there was a 30.000 player test, but it seems nobody at the office was thinking about 30.000 players having 100 constructs with each construct having 100s of elements. But now everything is a suprise and will cost too much money to implement.

 

I think a lot of players are afraid that this game might make it, and thats why they are afraid to quit. So they suck up every excuse NQ has for changes and hope for the better.

I am certain the goal is not to make this game work, its to experiment with the things they can do.

 

Most developing games ive played just added stuff to the game before release. This one only removes stuff.

Ill be watching DU vids and posts and keep an eye on this 'game'... See if it will ever be a succes. And if it is a succes, what kind of game is it?

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9 hours ago, Zarcata said:


 

I had simply made a request and received an answer accordingly:

The question: 
 

 

 

Die Antwort von NQ-Deckard:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lol its not like a Wallet Hostage Negociation where they can hold our money hostage. The truth is we can walk away any time we want. This situation is more like NQ is threatening Suicide and we are talking them down from the ledge they are threatening to jump off of.

 

Deckards like "We dont barter with our lives" while hes moving closer to falling off the edge and its like im just trying to save you from yourself bro. Back away from the ledge and NQs like "the time for talkings over its going to happen you better get ready to clean it up".

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35 minutes ago, Sabretooth said:

Everybody knew there was a 30.000 player test, but it seems nobody at the office was thinking about 30.000 players having 100 constructs with each construct having 100s of elements.

Of course not. We know that NQ always underestimates the players. Maybe they even were naive enough to think that the personal core limit will do the job and than completely surprised that everybody creates his own org to go bejond.

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16 minutes ago, Sabretooth said:

This is not a problem that nobody could not see coming, why such a drastic rule now?

 

While I'm not so sure about how this is phrased, I agree with the sentiment. :D 

 

With over 8 years on the project now, it's really beyond stupid that it is only just now that NQ is actually doing the math on the cost of player scaling...when this is something they've been asked about dozens of times since the forums opens around 2016. 

 

It's like building a casino...but not doing any sort of calculations about revenue until after you're done...then realizing you didn't put enough slot machines on the floor and your casino will never work. Yes, it's a problem. Yes, it was your most fundamental job to figure this out. 

 

So now we have to rip out a big part of the floor and redo it because someone forgot that the purpose of a casino is to make money...of course, a casinos takes a lot less time to build than DU has, so I understand the analogy is not perfect. Yet again, NQ is stuck because JC didn't want to do any work to understand a vital part of the business early on. 

 

With that being said...NQ doesn't have a bunch of great options at this point. Either they raise prices or lower limits. 

 

IMO throwing more money at NQ in the form of higher subs is not appealing...for example, a $15/month sub is as expensive as any other AAA subscription MMO -- there's no way in my mind that DU will retain people at that price. Not with the quality of product they are offering in return. 

 

I do think NQ is likely overreacting some. Of course DU can't support each player using all 1000+ cores...but that's very, very unlikely to happen. Hell, that's being downright optimistic -- come release time, I expect something like 10-20% of players won't even utilize a single core...that they will churn well before that... ?‍♂️

 

TLDR: This was a very avoidable problem that NQ is overreacting to solve because they are too optimistic in thinking that "all the new players" will be building at scale when most will probably churn quickly. 

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1 hour ago, Sabretooth said:

Everybody knew there was a 30.000 player test, but it seems nobody at the office was thinking about 30.000 players having 100 constructs with each construct having 100s of elements. But now everything is a suprise and will cost too much money to implement.

Let me just say that you simply do not have enough information to judge what those of us who have been here for 5+ years and logged for the first time 29 September 2017 know, leearnt or have seen NQ do. You also do not know of the level and amnout of feedback we, as early backers, provided NQ early on and what NQ did or did not do with that. You really only know about the tailend of it and the fallout that followed.

 

So I can't blame you for not knowing, I can question the ease with which you seem to dismiss that you may not have all the information others have. That is just ignorance and makes your comment on this fairly meaningless.

 

  

Just now, blundertwink said:

With over 8 years on the project now, it's really beyond stupid that it is only just now that NQ is actually doing the math on the cost of player scaling...when this is something they've been asked about dozens of times since the forums opens around 2016. 

 

Ask JC..

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1 minute ago, blazemonger said:

Let me just say that you simply do not have enough information to judge what those of us who have been here for 5+ years and logged for the first time 29 September 2017 know, leearnt or have seen NQ do. You also do not know of the level and amnout of feedback we, as early backers, provided NQ early on and what NQ did or did not do with that. You really only know about the tailend of it and the fallout that followed.

 

So I can't blame you for not knowing, I can question the ease with which you seem to dismiss that you may not have all the information others have. That is just ignorance and makes your comment on this fairly meaningless.

You are right that im not an alpha backer, but it also is a different company right now.

And Im not into what you were promised, Im into what I have experienced.

 

If you think my comment is meaningless to this topic, then Im sorry. I might have understood it wrong.

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19 minutes ago, Sabretooth said:

You are right that im not an alpha backer, but it also is a different company right now.

 

Yes, it is.. For one, the person who pretty much hammerd his "vision" through with no regard  for what is and/or was feasible is gone, he was fired for good reason.

 

As you joined at the start of Beta all you have seen is the fallout of his (lack of) actions and management of the project, leading to his removal and the company scrambling to save what hey can in an attempt to try and build up what's possibel towards a release and beyond.

 

Ignoring all that happened before you joined, simple because "you were not there" is what I feel is not helpful and pretty much judging those who were and now see NQ tryuing to make this work and then seeing a sign of actually standing up to the whims of the community, however well intended that may hav ebeen, for us is liek a breath of fresh air.

I also do not agree that I am saying (as I am OP here) that NQ is now suddenly doing great and all is well, far from it. But I do believe that IF NQ were to show us more of what we saw come from Deckard this wekeend, there is hope yet. This was the first time really I've seen someone at NQ stand up and pretty much say "enough" and I appreciat that as I feel NQ needs to take ownership and show leadership more and not blow in every which way the majority of noise in the community blows them. NQ needs to put their own goals first and creat ethe game they feel they should create. Only then is it for us to say whether we are willing to play that game. 

 

The devlopment of DU is not a democratic process between us and NQ, we can voice our opinion and provide feedback. And while NQ should listen to that and consider it if it makes sense, NQ has to call what goes and what does not, and that is what they did here, clearly and directly.

If you want to tell NQ what they should do, write them a check for acouple of million and you can..

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38 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

The devlopment of DU is not a democratic process between us and NQ, we can voice our opinion and provide feedback. And while NQ should listen to that and consider it if it makes sense, NQ has to call what goes and what does not, and that is what they did here, clearly and directly.


If you want to tell NQ what they should do, write them a check for acouple of million and you can..

I completely understand why NQ needs to limit core counts (that's part of why we started asking about sustainability back in 2016/2017), but it never made sense for them to pretend everything was fine so that a precedence for core usage was made and then suddenly.. wham! The 'beta' soft-release for example would have been much better timing combined with the 'release' wipe.

 

And if NQ had forced the 15+10 core limit, then no amount of investment money would have saved the game. So while not a democratic process, there is no commercially driven game company that can afford to ignore the player base.

 

And my biggest concern at the moment is trying to figure out how NQ managed to conclude that those 15+10 numbers would result in a functional game that players would want to play. Especially when combined with how the MU system works.

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Where do you get this 15+10 limit from @CptLoRes

 

The original change was 17+25 which was based on what NQ thought was a general 25 core count per player.. That general count was probably an average which was obtained by [total cores in game]/[number of accounts]  just like I expect the 1M tax original used was obtained through [amount of ore seeded on alioth]/[number of tiles on alioth]}*25/2 

 

And as it is, starting off there is not really bad, but when you find that calculation is really not adequately representing what's going on, then gradually tweak the numbers to get to where it's balanced. Instead of that, NQ just swings from one extreme to the one opposite and leave no room to balance further. It will be MUCH harder now for NQ to reduce core count if they'd find they need to withough creating another storm. Had they gone for say 25 personal/50 org cores and not change anything just yet, they might have found a good portion of the noise would have died down already. IMO an synonym for negotiating in this context is finding a balance and you generally find the balance by small adjustements towards the middle until you meet up somewhere in that area, not by a massive swing to the other side.

 

The big change also creates the idea of NQ holding back (on purpose) for some as we saw quite clearly. I really do not think that is the case, I think NQ just has an odd way of calculating their numbers in these matters and then overreacts when they encounter resistance.

In the case of the cores, I expect NQ ended up at twice the amount they could have balanced out on.

50/50 woud have been fine, it's plenty for a solo player and an org woudl need 33 members to hit the cap which is a reasonable member count IMO.

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Since the player slots where unchanged in the original announcement, it makes more sense to talk about the org slots numbers as a separate issue.

 

Or to quote NQ:

  • Each Novean will have 15 assignable organization construct slots, with an additional 10 available from talents.

And my issue with NQ trying to limit cores beyond technical limitations, is pretty simple. DU is a building game, so for f**** sake let players build.

 

And it cannot be ignore that many of the current famous landmark (no phun intended) structures in DU are passion projects made by solo players or small orgs, since the big ones tend to be mostly PvP oriented.

 

So my original question stands. How did NQ manage to conclude that those numbers where acceptable for any long term player enjoyment in this game? And to me this shows a frightening amount of disconnect between NQ and how players interact with this game.

 

Even I as a mostly inactive small time solo builder with minimal core usage in the game, did not even need to finish reading the announcement before I knew for certain what a shit storm this would cause.

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8 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

And my issue with NQ trying to limit cores beyond technical limitations, is pretty simple. DU is a building game, so for f**** sake let players build.

 

See this is why the Alt thing seems like it's messing up this whole discussion.

 

NQ isn't trying to limit cores, they are trying to decide how many each player should be given, with the purchase of a subscription.  But because the subject of Alts is touchy, i feel like they were kind of tiptoeing around how you go about buying more.  Until Deckard's post at least.

 

There are definitely players in the game right now with 300-400+ cores, who are using every single one of them, or contributing to the game in some way with them.  But there are also a lot of people with some junk lying around.  Myself included.  

 

The players with the junk, need to be encouraged to clean it up, because real estate in the game has value.  And the players who actually need 400 cores, need to start paying a bit more than everyone else.

 

You shouldn't feel like they are trying to stop you from building, you should feel like they are cleaning up their product (making it profitable, ect), to make room to sell you the ability to build as much as you want.

 

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