this game is a long haul, don't let your hopes down.

[ELX987]

ive evaluated my feelings on this game, its a long, long wait, but i feel it will come back, i dont care if its 10 players, 100 or whatever, i think this game will come back!

 

i want to still build and PVP (and give legion a run for their money)

 

i believe in you NQ! you can fix this!

[blazemonger]

Much will depend on what will happen post launch. 

 

I fully expect NQ will launch the game end of this year in a stet which is far from feature complete relative to the game we were pitched during kickstarter and upto start of Beta. That in itself is not a major issue as long as what is launched works, works well and shows the prospect of what lies ahead in the first two years beyond launch. A lot will dpednn on whether NQ improves their communication skills and provides more clear and consistent information and updates around their progress and plans.

 

IF they do this and IF the game is able to gain traction by seeing many more players arrive or return after which NQ manages to retain them, NQ may have a chance of keeping DU alive and running. But they must change and stop being techheeads with the communication deficiency that generally comes with that. They need proper and skilled people able to engage and connect with their community in a sustained and meaningful way. If they do not, their chances will diminish very quickly.

 

Games like DU succeed or fail by retaining the loyalty and enthousiasm of the community. NQ have a chance to make that happen.

[blundertwink]

I agree overall that NQ is moving in the right direction, especially with improving their comms. 

 

Unfortunately, I'm not yet convinced that DU will be salvageable -- they have a lot of work to do in not so much time to prep this game for a release.

 

A lot of their success will depend on how they market the game...My fear is that they will overreach with their marketing and attract a mess of players that quickly churn when the expectations presented in the adverts (build anything! make a civilization!) meet the game as it exists. 

 

Hell, I expect some gamers will churn solely based on the UI/UX still feeling intensely "indie"... ?‍♂️

 

I think NQ should be careful and go slowly with their marketing come release...but they will likely blitz as much marketing budget into it as they humanly can and make the game look as amazing as possible in their adverts. 

 

Of all the places for NQ to improve their communication skills...I think how they market the game at release will be the most critical. The new CEO might think they need as many new players as possible...but that approach might be counter-productive depending on exactly how they present the game. 

[RugesV]

They have made some pretty good progress the last 6 months. But if we figure they have been running full tilt the last 6 months. Another 6 months is not going to put them in a ready to release state. Unless they are just trying to blow it out the door. 

[Knight-Sevy]

Just create spawn areas of a few SUs.

People will walk around looking for wreckage. Find more and it will bring interactions between all these wreckage players

[VandelayIndustries]

36 minutes ago, Knight-Sevy said:

Just create spawn areas of a few SUs.

People will walk around looking for wreckage. Find more and it will bring interactions between all these wreckage players

 

Thats how bad its gotten hasnt it?  We cant even imagine in our heads that NQ could create a meaningful radar system for legit exploration that was both balanced, and useful.  

[le_souriceau]

20 hours ago, blundertwink said:

A lot of their success will depend on how they market the game...My fear is that they will overreach with their marketing and attract a mess of players that quickly churn when the expectations presented in the adverts (build anything! make a civilization!) meet the game as it exists. 

 

Honestly, being in NQ marketing person shoes is like wearing glowing heated iron boots.

Its total damned if you do damned if you don't.

 

Game presentation obviously need to be heavly sugarcoated, to say it polite (because it still years behind some trully presentable form); yet in very smart way -- if you overdo BS, people will totaly hate it. This happened with their last marketing effort, when NQ produced trailer and advert materials having nothing in common with sad reality of game at that moment ("vision" BS). So it way almost pure and, without doubt, damaging lie.

 

So if I were NQ marketing guy, I tried to kinda destill good about game (some things that exist and can be trully made/achieved/experienced) and sugarcoat it, so it looks/sounds good, but nothing is trully untrue in context of reality.

 

Example:

 

> Usual NQ way of BS: build cities bla bla bla (stupid video with premade city and animated bots) = lie

> Smart marketing: build huge space megastructures in collaboration with hundreds of players (show some idk voxel nerd stations) = kinda true

 

 

 

[Mordgier]

On 2/16/2022 at 5:05 AM, ELX987 said:

 i dont care if its 10 players, 100 or whatever, i think this game will come back!

 

This is cute.

 

Imagine thinking that a game with 100 players is viable.

 

NQ has 68 employees according to LinkedIn.  It's safe to assume that they are burning through ~5m a year - in short they need 50k paid accounts to break even.

 

 

 

[bleakcon]

On 2/16/2022 at 10:05 AM, ELX987 said:

ive evaluated my feelings on this game, its a long, long wait, but i feel it will come back, i dont care if its 10 players, 100 or whatever, i think this game will come back!

 

i want to still build and PVP (and give legion a run for their money)

 

i believe in you NQ! you can fix this!

Almost withyou exception this has been the journey every player of this game has had.

I came in to this game pre .23 and I can tell you I had a blast, it was great fun and there seemed to be a fair few people playing, sure, it wasn't perfect but I at least had fun creating a factory, figuring out what I needed, visiting other planets and searching for resources etc. 

Then came .23, ok, wasn't the best, schematics sucked but I built up a collection, I continued building ships and planning infrastructure for a guild.

Then came the missions, I was a whale, I played that shit and made billions, it was weirdly fun optimising ships for bringing a lot of packages out of orbit, for optimising the space-based ship to have exactly enough fuel to get out of pipe and then get to the destination, drop those packages onto a atmos ship and land, then of course refill and go again.

It kept me interested for a bit until I saw the playerbase dwindle, I saw NQ floundering about achieving very little and simply promising to communicate more and to 'deliver' more.

Fast forward more than half a year and the vast majority of changes have not been to improve gameplay but to turn this into a game that you pay for monthly but log in once a day for a few hours to do 'your dailies' and it stinks of them trying to save on costs.

At about the same time they did the 'mining overhaul' they raised the sub price for a beta game which to me was just salt in the wound.

Now they are limiting number of cores.

Things they have done which are actually good: An additional tool for building (great but so much more is needed: multi-core support? the ability to take down a core and stash it in a container?), Cleaning up markets (let's not pretend this isn't also for making a saving on the server side).

As you will likely accuse me of (with just cause) being bitter, let me remind you that I and many others have watched a game with promise and potential slowly degrade in playerbase and even features, with the new features primarily for reasons of them realising just how unscaleable their tech is and all the while charging us more for their mistake.

So nope, I don't hold out the most hope for this game, I can't imagine they can keep this game in beta for too long and if they can't complete the following list in its entirety before launch I don't see it taking (that is sad because i really do love this game and it is because of that I am unwilling to hope because I can see it going the way of the dinosaur)....anyhow that list:

1. massive pvp overhaul, it is the worst pvp in any game I have ever seen, I see they were trying to do some kind of eve-esque gameplay but it isn't even close, eve pvp can actually be really fun.

2. make planets more diverse.

3. give purpose to building other than just storage for factories/containers.

4. rethink the automining calibration mechanic, it is hot garbage.

5. add a tool to:
  a. take down a core and move the components of that core into containers.

  b. allow players to see what a core looks like before putting it down, currently moving multi-core structures is like pulling teeth.

  c. some way of figuring out what angle something is (even if it is just 45/90/135/180 and so on.

6. 'fix' construction of ships - with changes to brakes coming and stacking it is going to be super hard to make something look nice and be functional, we shouldn't have to choose.

7. add a mechanic to track ships further than just 2SU, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack and it isn't fun, bonus: add this mechanic and then add ways to construct ships which are 'stealthy'.

8. Add addtional ship parts, examples: XL wing variants, XL atmos engines, brakes with vastly superior stopping power (at the cost of fuel), oh and fuel - combustiable fuel - when I have a suit which lets me fly into space and enter a planets atmosphere with no issues? Yeah parts that use other sources of power which are higher tier and much more expensive to lose.

9. Add a cost to AGG and make the thing less mind numbingly boring to use (make it go up faster)

10. review sub warp speed cap, 30k is bs, no one wants to do missions taking them 5 hours of afk for a few mill, players should be able to exceed this cap and pay for it in fuel and ship design.

11. add power.

 

I went a little ott but I do think 90percent of this stuff needs looking at and addressing before they can look forward to a player base that makes this game a sustainable business.

I hope they succeed but the track record isn't there and their motivations as of late have been solely focussed on sorting out their lack of planning and foresight from the past.

 

[Musclethorpe]

Not gonna lie OP, this tastes like copium. Having played Elite: Dangerous for 7 years (another space game with huge pontential) and see it fall short of goodness (not even greatness) every single new content release, I am not holding out hope for this game. To draw parallels, both the release of DSAT/Asteroids and Wrecks have been very poorly executed, but they still consider those boxes checked, ready to move on.

[VandelayIndustries]

13 minutes ago, Musclethorpe said:

Not gonna lie OP, this tastes like copium. Having played Elite: Dangerous for 7 years (another space game with huge pontential) and see it fall short of goodness (not even greatness) every single new content release, I am not holding out hope for this game. To draw parallels, both the release of DSAT/Asteroids and Wrecks have been very poorly executed, but they still consider those boxes checked, ready to move on.

 

They dont/wont even acknowledge how bad the DSAT idea and implementation was.

[GraXXoR]

I still find it funny that they are the ones who choose to check their own check boxes. 
 

Even more hilarious is when they check trivial boxes that weren’t even on the roadmap just to make things look a bit more fleshed out.  

[le_souriceau]

1 hour ago, Jinxed said:

Even more hilarious is when they check trivial boxes that weren’t even on the roadmap just to make things look a bit more fleshed out.  

 

Well, nothing personal, but they mainly french. Its bit of special culture of endless meetings/reports/plans of how make plans. I will be not suprised, if 2/3 of NQ overall worktime is not developing, but preparing all kind of nonsense for next group talks session.

 

So these checkboxes is someones lifeline during quarter meeting (they not for us).