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SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

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I am for a wipe, but would keep schematics.  Also, is it really an “advantage” for players to keep their static creations?  Most creative types that don’t want to lose their creations have built creations that don’t give them any economic benefit.  The industries, or ships for sale, etc. inside of them do.

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7 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

I've been doing some thinking... If NQ does a full wipe, except talent points. Existing players would have a HUGE advantage! My main can perfectly produce most T1 (Basic) Elements and is getting close to perfectly building T2 (Uncommon) Elements, the same is true for Atmo and Space Fuel. Do some math and see how much of a difference that makes compared to a fresh player. That's not only an issue with quanta, but with resource consumption rate, and advancement rate. I can make stuff faster, be earlier done with a ship, get earlier to missioning, trading, mining, etc. Grab land earlier, start scanning tiles earlier, etc.

 

My main has almost perfect passive mining talents, my other three characters also have almost perfect passive mining talents (except the handling talents, need only one char for those). Not only do I get more per autominer, I also get a TON more mining charges per week. My secondary has perfect placement talents for vehicles, combine that with the perfect flying skills of my third and (almost) fourth char. That would mean I could lift a lot more, a lot faster, combine that with the limitations of the max speed in space, that is also a huge advantage over newbies.

 

That's why keeping the talent points is a bad idea if the objective is to equalize the difference between new and existing players...

 

But there's something you can't realistically block, the knowledge on how to do stuff effectively in DU, what you should look at, how, why, when, etc. The only way to counter this is to massively change the game on launch or just start blocking existing players. Keep in mind that the players and corps that where playing in Alpha had a HUGE advantage over us Beta starters, they became massive fast. For some reason people keep forgetting this...

 

The problem with this is, there is no solution, not even an imperfect solution. The cat is out of the bag.

 

You do need to take into account people PAID for those talent points.. Talent Points are going to be the sticking point for those vets that actually played and are trying to accept that all their work is going up in smoke. We were told no wipe unless its technically needed. Nothing they said there would make a full wipe technically needed. Reset TP, but them back into unassigned and most vets are probably going to actually stay and keep up their alt accounts. 

 

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FULL wipe or no wipe, those are your only good options. People who can come into the game with their blueprints will have an income source that requires NO resources during a time that everyone else is scrambling to get established. These "builders" will have a good income source straight away with which they'll use to capture important tiles on remote planets. And since the ore pools don't rotate/change, they'll be locked down forever (where we are now). Regardless of the actual long-term affect on the economy we'll NEVER hear the end of "haves vs have-nots" because they didn't do a full wipe.

 

So please. Full wipe or no wipe.

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6 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

That's why keeping the talent points is a bad idea if the objective is to equalize the difference between new and existing players...

The entire concept of equalizing new and old players is fundamentally flawed. Having a fresh start where everybody is starting a zero means literally nothing in the span of the game, and there will always be new players joining that are behind older more veteran players.

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The only reason I paid for this game before release is talent points, as they were supposed to be persistent. As you guys a lot of times said, wipe would be very unlikely event, and only if something is really broken.
I get it why you would want to wipe the economy, but there is nothing wrong with talents, this mechanics didn't change, and there were no exploits of it. A lot of people payed real money only to continue training their talents.
If you wipe it - it's just straight money scam.

Suggestion: If you want a `fair` start, just freeze those points for a few months, and then give them back to players who paid for them.

Edited by W1zard
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I just wanted to throw my two cents in. I have made money in the game by doing commission work. Someone wanted something made that they didn't want to do for themselves for whatever reason they may have had. I had to give these people DRM-free blueprints so that they could use the item I made in whatever way they wanted. If there is a wipe, and people are allowed to keep their blueprints, a player like myself will be at a severe disadvantage. People are not going to pay me again for something they will already have after the wipe.

 

I would not mind having to make these things again for them, it is not about that. It is that there would be no reason for it. And I understand their point of view (I have this thing already, why would I pay for it again?!?). So, I would have to hope that there is a large part of the new community that would be willing to pay for commission work, I will have to prove myself to them without having the resources/foundation to show my existing work, or I will have to do the things I don't like to do, which I was able to bypass before.

 

I already don't agree with a lot of the decisions made, and they almost all had a negative impact on my play style, or the things I wanted to build. The screen LUA changes will in essence break my idea of making cartoon ships with expressive eyes that moved and made several expressions. The HTML method, mainly the PNG abilities, allowed me to use gradients and morph objects from one thing to another on the screen. The new method overly complicates this type of animation and effects to make it extremely unappealing to a player like myself. The voxel complexity changes are really strange. The things that should be triggering it (Like the crazy fonts that I make, or other wild things I have done to voxels, and the many uses of "checkerboard" patterns I have all over my place) don't seem to trigger it. But, literally using one material, and only plain square voxels, to make two walls that meet in a corner, a roof and a floor, will light up at 75% complex MINIMUM. So, if making a literal room size box already sets me to 75%, that doesn't leave me any room to do much to it beyond that.

 

I don't want a full wipe, including blueprints, because I would not like to lose all the blueprints for my own things I have put several hours into making. Nor would I want it for anyone else. The reason I am bringing these subjects up is to show why I will probably (never say never) not return if there is a wipe. I don't like the current state of mining (Which is more of a chore every 3 days to click something and just stand around waiting.), so I will don't really want to have to do that to make money to even get to where I was.

 

This is not about the items I give out for free. Those were my choice to give out for free. I am specifically talking about hours and hours of build work I did in private, for others, that they paid me for. Just to clear up any confusion on that.

 

If there is a wipe, no matter which type of wipe it is...  Please don't wipe talent points. That is 100% a game killer to me.

 

Well, that's it for me. Just wanted you to at least hear a point of view I did not see represented.

 

Thanks for reading, if you did!

 

-Me.

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I don’t really care which route you take at this point. We need an answer rather than you dangling a carrot in front of us for months on end. One of the biggest problems that led to your “we heard you” tag line was lack of effective communication. You aren’t living up to that tag line. If you hear us, you would realize we aren’t a bunch of toddlers you can string along with promises of candies and rainbows. A lot of us have invested a lot of time and money into the progression of this game, we are your customers, and we will be the lifeblood of this game via our continued monetized contribution to this game beyond launch.

 

Now, I will stay regardless as I love this game but I do believe that those who contributed to the progression and development of this game through pushing its limits, testing its functions and providing inputs to your team deserve a “reward” for that time and effort. Personally, if there is a wipe, I just want the talent points I’ve acquired during my time as it directly reflects the time I’ve spent. But that is just my opinion.

 

What I truly want to see is an answer to the most pressing question that your customers have, as it will directly contribute to the direction they take between now and launch. Don’t make the mistake of dangling carrots, people will eventually give up on you and move on which will definitely damage the chances of this game succeeding. 
 

Thank you for bringing it this far, hopefully we can continue down the path of a great game. 

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You want feedback NQ.

I am against a wipe.

 

The current player base gave you feedback, paid for their accounts and created the current status of the game. This should be worth a lot and should be more important then some potential player which played 0 hours.  I might get the feeling you are willingly risking your current player base for new potential players, where it is not even safe if they want stick to the game.

--> Most importantly. You told us, that a wipe would have technical reasons otherwise there would be no wipe

 

 

Even if you still consider to wipe entirely, then please remove any sell and buy order on the market, exept schematics. Add also player markets  (Please don't consider to remove schematics entirely!).

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, CyberDay said:

 

You do need to take into account people PAID for those talent points.. Talent Points are going to be the sticking point for those vets that actually played and are trying to accept that all their work is going up in smoke. We were told no wipe unless its technically needed. Nothing they said there would make a full wipe technically needed. Reset TP, but them back into unassigned and most vets are probably going to actually stay and keep up their alt accounts. 

 

I paid for a persistent MMO experience, so everything I did in this game would be preserved, as in not wiped. I spend way, way more time building stuff, accumulating stuff an quanta then the value of multiple subscriptions for a year and a half. Something by a factor a 100+... Time=money.

 

Now that wouldn't be so bad if the game loop was truly enjoyable all the time I spent on it. Let me tell you a secret about DU, it isn't fun most of the time. Imho it's about satisfaction when you make certain stuff happen, like building X, buying Y, or manufacturing Z, etc. All those things require you to do a lot of boring things. Mining was interesting when you started, but doing it for many, many  hours per day, week in week out is quickly no longer fun. Setting up 100s of machines is also quickly no fun anymore. Placing voxels small square by small square, because NQ has very limited tools, is quickly no fun anymore. Flying 12-16 hrs/day doing missions... You get the idea... Now if you hit that magic number that allows you to do XYZ, that is the point of satisfaction. The satisfaction partially comes from not having to do that again for that particular project, unless you yourself do something really stupid (pvp).

 

I agree that keeping the Talent points will actually keep most veterans playing, making the TP unassigned would be a HUGE bonus. But then the question becomes, why just the TP, that gives the veteran players a HUGE advantage over starting players? Why not just keep everything? I'm absolutely not saying that I want a complete wipe, no way! But I am a huge proponent of consistency, and this wipe business sounds like a LOT of inconsistencies and still leaving certain people with HUGE advantages...

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The ONLY thing that will save this game is frequent and substantial improvements to the game mechanics.

 

Any short term advantage and influx of new players directly caused by a wipe (if any), will quickly be lost once they start to actually play the game.

The long tail with loss of player respect and trust caused by a wipe on the other hand...

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Full Wipe + Offline Workshop for Blueprints. (Empyrion)

 

Full Wipe but allow players the opportunity to maintain Blueprints in an offline mode, much like Empyrion. There's no reason to lose one's handwork, and better yet, this Workshop mode would allow people to experiment without needing to invest so much time/resources into getting to the point where they can THEN start testing. If you want to limit it, you could make it so that it's just one planet, moon, and space... if you don't want to just have people fully min/max a Construct in Workshop, before deploying it to the Live world.

Edited by Tuckland
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Any wipe that affects constructs and the resources on planets and I am gone.  I am not going to spend more time redoing what I have done for a 3rd time.  My 4 accts gone.  I have spent every day playing DU building constructs, ships, cities and I am not about to have to do it again.  Some of my constructs require specific alignment and I'm not going through that again and spend months trying to get back to where I am.

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12 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

I paid for a persistent MMO experience, so everything I did in this game would be preserved, as in not wiped. I spend way, way more time building stuff, accumulating stuff an quanta then the value of multiple subscriptions for a year and a half. Something by a factor a 100+... Time=money.

 

Now that wouldn't be so bad if the game loop was truly enjoyable all the time I spent on it. Let me tell you a secret about DU, it isn't fun most of the time. Imho it's about satisfaction when you make certain stuff happen, like building X, buying Y, or manufacturing Z, etc. All those things require you to do a lot of boring things. Mining was interesting when you started, but doing it for many, many  hours per day, week in week out is quickly no longer fun. Setting up 100s of machines is also quickly no fun anymore. Placing voxels small square by small square, because NQ has very limited tools, is quickly no fun anymore. Flying 12-16 hrs/day doing missions... You get the idea... Now if you hit that magic number that allows you to do XYZ, that is the point of satisfaction. The satisfaction partially comes from not having to do that again for that particular project, unless you yourself do something really stupid (pvp).

 

I agree that keeping the Talent points will actually keep most veterans playing, making the TP unassigned would be a HUGE bonus. But then the question becomes, why just the TP, that gives the veteran players a HUGE advantage over starting players? Why not just keep everything? I'm absolutely not saying that I want a complete wipe, no way! But I am a huge proponent of consistency, and this wipe business sounds like a LOT of inconsistencies and still leaving certain people with HUGE advantages...

 

If you payed and played for 2 years, you SHOULD have a fairly large advantage over new players coming into the game, its like saying we should wipe every year or two so new players coming in wont feel behind. You paid your time, you set up your skills. There is no reason to literally rip away everything from the people who kept the dream going to hope you might get a few new players. As mentioned several time, the imaginary mob of people that everyone's expecting to show up doesn't exist. We may 3-4x our number temporarily, but the vets will still make up a large amount of the paid accounts.

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26 minutes ago, Metallical said:

I just wanted to throw my two cents in. I have made money in the game by doing commission work. Someone wanted something made that they didn't want to do for themselves for whatever reason they may have had. I had to give these people DRM-free blueprints so that they could use the item I made in whatever way they wanted. If there is a wipe, and people are allowed to keep their blueprints, a player like myself will be at a severe disadvantage. People are not going to pay me again for something they will already have after the wipe.

 

I would not mind having to make these things again for them, it is not about that. It is that there would be no reason for it. And I understand their point of view (I have this thing already, why would I pay for it again?!?). So, I would have to hope that there is a large part of the new community that would be willing to pay for commission work, I will have to prove myself to them without having the resources/foundation to show my existing work, or I will have to do the things I don't like to do, which I was able to bypass before.

 

I already don't agree with a lot of the decisions made, and they almost all had a negative impact on my play style, or the things I wanted to build. The screen LUA changes will in essence break my idea of making cartoon ships with expressive eyes that moved and made several expressions. The HTML method, mainly the PNG abilities, allowed me to use gradients and morph objects from one thing to another on the screen. The new method overly complicates this type of animation and effects to make it extremely unappealing to a player like myself. The voxel complexity changes are really strange. The things that should be triggering it (Like the crazy fonts that I make, or other wild things I have done to voxels, and the many uses of "checkerboard" patterns I have all over my place) don't seem to trigger it. But, literally using one material, and only plain square voxels, to make two walls that meet in a corner, a roof and a floor, will light up at 75% complex MINIMUM. So, if making a literal room size box already sets me to 75%, that doesn't leave me any room to do much to it beyond that.

 

I don't want a full wipe, including blueprints, because I would not like to lose all the blueprints for my own things I have put several hours into making. Nor would I want it for anyone else. The reason I am bringing these subjects up is to show why I will probably (never say never) not return if there is a wipe. I don't like the current state of mining (Which is more of a chore every 3 days to click something and just stand around waiting.), so I will don't really want to have to do that to make money to even get to where I was.

 

This is not about the items I give out for free. Those were my choice to give out for free. I am specifically talking about hours and hours of build work I did in private, for others, that they paid me for. Just to clear up any confusion on that.

 

If there is a wipe, no matter which type of wipe it is...  Please don't wipe talent points. That is 100% a game killer to me.

 

Well, that's it for me. Just wanted you to at least hear a point of view I did not see represented.

 

Thanks for reading, if you did!

 

-Me.

 

Building is only one aspect of the game. Ive spent millions of quanta on tile fees for salvage, billions on elements, and billions on ore. I feel bad that your work is lost but so is everyone else's.

 

I'm still for a wipe, the economy has issues.

 

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Hallo NQ-Team,

 

die Diskussion um einen Wip finde ich falsch. Es sollte keine Wip geben, wie versprochen.

 

Wenn eine Entzerrung zwischen neuen und alten Spielern stattfinden soll, dann doch bitte in einem neuen Sonnensystem für Spieler die bei der RELEASE bei Null anfangen möchten (alles auf 0).

Dann könnt Ihr das neue System so schön machen wie Ihr denkt.

 

Beide System sind natürlich im selben Universum, aber weit von einander entfernt. Die alten Spieler können dann halt herausfinden, wie man dort hinkommt (1 live Server). Sollte mindesten 1 Jahr dauern.

 

Im alten System kann man ja die super Reichen etwas einschränken. 

zB.: max 1 000 000 000 Quanta pro Avatar; löschen aller Items teurer als 50 000 000 Quanta (incl. Schematas).

 

Die Avatare mit Beta-Key, kann man nur in den REALEASE übernehmen, wenn man für 1 Jahr ein ABO abschließt (dann habt Ihr auch mehr Geld). Ansonsten verlieren diese Avatar alles (alles auf 0).

 

Allen Spielern wird zum Start des RELEASE freigestellt, ob Sie im neuen oder alten System starten wollen.

 

PS.: Manche Planeten sind halt nicht so schön, ist Natur.

 

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From the pros and cons it sounds like NQ is leaning towards a wipe of sorts, some kind of easy solution.

 

Fair? What life is fair now? Everyone on a par with their pcs, time, money?? Can u lot fix that too with a wipe?

 

Why does it matter if some players made a lot of quanta? Their luck for staring the game early in alpha/beta if u ask me.

 

Blue prints? What's some peoples' problem with them? Fix them? Don't they serve a purpose? Markets? Improve them?

 

I've heard the easy way is never the right way.. but really i dunno, maybe a bit more concern for loyal dedicated players than new ones?

 

I don't like the sound of having my efforts deleted, I also feel lucky I found this game early.

 

I specifically recall JC publicly saying that there would be 'no more wipes', were there any other representatives of NQ at the time that had anything to the contrary to say, any sort of interdiction? How about all the players that responded to that?

 

And lastly, I think NQ's answer to this whole wipe thing should be, 'As promised there will be no more wipes unless entirely unavoidable as with the terrain wipe.' End of story, but for a little fun, 'We understand the schematic system has its issues, we will endeavor to improve it. As for them lucky players that have been with us through thick and thin we hope you're still enjoying the game. XO, lots of ❤️ NQ'

Edited by Skyreaper
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Just now, space_man said:

 

Building is only one aspect of the game. Ive spent millions of quanta on tile fees for salvage, billions on elements, and billions on ore. I feel bad that your work is lost but so is everyone else's.

 

I'm still for a wipe, the economy has issues.

 

I am not saying that. I don't care that my work is lost. I care that I can't do it again, because it is NOT lost. The customer still has their copy of the blueprint.  You can make all your money back the way you did before. I, cannot. My issue was not having to redo anything. It was not being able to it the way I did.

 

Yes, it is just building. That's like saying, your stuff is just spending money. Anything can be made out to be "just <blah blah>".

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3 minutes ago, space_man said:

 

Building is only one aspect of the game. Ive spent millions of quanta on tile fees for salvage, billions on elements, and billions on ore. I feel bad that your work is lost but so is everyone else's.

 

I'm still for a wipe, the economy has issues.

 

Unfortunately the wipe will not fix the economy.  Too much production,  not enough destruction.  You need to have PVE ships take real damage when they crash.  All your doing right now is pushing the problem forward and just pissing off people that have spent a lot of effort based on the No Wipe unless absolutely necessary.    2+ Years of effort on some of the large projects like Utopia,  not sure anyone would ever have built those if they would have known a wipe was going to happen.  Why would you rebuild some of these large projects if you cant thrust no Wipe will happen down the path. 

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1 minute ago, Metallical said:

I am not saying that. I don't care that my work is lost. I care that I can't do it again, because it is NOT lost. The customer still has their copy of the blueprint.  You can make all your money back the way you did before. I, cannot. My issue was not having to redo anything. It was not being able to it the way I did.

 

Yes, it is just building. That's like saying, your stuff is just spending money. Anything can be made out to be "just <blah blah>".

The salvage I have would be lost. 

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5 minutes ago, CyberDay said:

If you payed and played for 2 years, you SHOULD have a fairly large advantage over new players coming into the game

I don't care about advantage over others, I'm doing my own thing in DU and I want to keep what I've been doing the past year and a half. So I don't want ANY wipe. I have no interest in mining another 25 million Natron for fuel, etc. I want stability in tools and rules, I want to start designing space ships without another bunch of extreme makeover balancing patches that would make my craft unflyable without a major redesign. I do not want to setup another bunch of space bases by hand, because we can't accurately place stuff and some scripts require voxel precission. I do not want to flatten an entire tile again at 1600 meters (not just flatten, but place a lot of new ground), etc.

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It seems to me that NQ is trying to monetize a persistent world game, and a fresh start, at the same time.

 

They are making promises to both sides that they can't keep.  And everyone is going to lose.

 

I don't even know where to go from here.  Ideally, they shouldn't have sold the "final wipe" the first time, if it was a promise they couldn't keep.

 

And i fail to see how making that promise again to a whole new (entirely theoretical) group of players, is going to benefit the game.

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4 minutes ago, FuriousPuppy said:

its going to wipe no matter what we say, they have a below 1k player base currently and thats not enough to keep the game going. A wipe is going to take place we just don't know how or when

What sources do you have that we don't have? If you're quoting the pletora of MMO player population sites, those are far, far from accurate! I would go so far as to say that your comment and number of players is meaningless.

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