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SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

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Let's suppose a wipe is necessary and a good idea. Do you have the tools in place now to deal with the problems that lead to needing a wipe? 

Can you do a server rollback if something goes horribly wrong?

Can you find exploiters, and remove the damage they did in a targeted efficient way?

Is the economy fixed so that there is some churn and the wealthiest people at any given time don't just have an insurmountable advantage forever?

In other words, if you wipe into release, will you be able to then run a persistent MMO?

 

I have been waiting for some game systems to be fixed. My biggest complaint is that ships that die in pvp do not die. They just need a new core and 5 mins of scrap application. There are a lot of mechanics that favor the bigger group that don't exist in a better pvp game. Then there is the problem that people who do not participate in pvp never lose elements in any way. Which means that resources do not leave the game.

 

This wipe puts me in a different mood from "I hope they eventually fix it." It leads me to doing a cost-benefit analysis. "After the wipe I will have zero sunk costs in this game. At that point, is the gameplay good enough that I would want to play it?" I think the answer is no.

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Don’t wipe anything. We already have a soft wipe mechanism with reclaiming tiles and abandon cores from players who unsubbed 90 days.

 

The economy is fine. It really just needs more activity. The mega rich have no material effect on anyone. 
 

Wipe argument to get more players is a joke given that problem is perennial with any MMO.

 

Wiping skill points, if done, should absolutely come with refunds to paying players. Terrible idea as well.

 

Any wipe at this point is a giant F*you from NQ. 
 

This is a case study for how to not run a company. What a disaster.

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On 4/14/2022 at 10:52 AM, Kurock said:

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 

Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

I feel the same about the Oasis Casino i spent 6 months on. All that work just poof, gone! Its really disappointing and disheartening. 

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8 hours ago, Squidrew_ said:

the changes that took place on Jago and Teoma were only asset updates and some very minor surface terrain changes. the revamp that NQ is talking about is a full revamp, with totally new terrain, biomes, continents, etc. you can see some of the stuff they had originally planned (and the tools they have now for generating planets) in this old dev diary

I truly hope this is what they intend to do, but after flying around the brand new planet of Haven for a bit it's just perlin noise like all the other ugly planets. Not a single interesting landmark to be had.  Maybe they have to roll out the new tech all at once, maybe not...  😕

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Lol welp. Seems like my org is dead again. It disintegrated two mass-quittings ago, got it back together after the last mass migration of players, and now its going through the third exodus. I could revive it again, but how long until NQ drives off a new player base? Anybody know any games like this that are persistent?

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NQ please consider the type of players that are playing your game. It's not the type who's looking for 15 minutes of fun ... It's the type that wants to create something, It's the people, who want to build something that they and their fellow players can enjoy.

 

In other games, you're done after a week of intense play. So there is no loss in starting over. Such a beta can be played without remorse or risk. But DU is different! The only reason, I’m playing this kind of game already during the beta is, because I was told, there wouldn't be another reset.
(Otherwise I would have waited until release. So a lot of invested lifetime and several hundred invested euros are at stake. And at the moment I doubt that I'll have the drive to work on everything again.)

 

How much "lead" do we old ones have now? A year, a year and a half? Do you want to restart the game every year and a half just because new players would otherwise be disadvantaged? Seriously? That's not an argument in a continuous/persistent universe!

 

- Erase the schematics ... we will rebuild/modify our factories, but don't take our constructs away from us.
- Delete accounts that have been inactive for a long time.
- If you know that some players have gotten too rich too quickly by exploiting poorly balanced mechanics, then target them directly or set a credit cap immediately (use caution, please).

 

We can live with balancing and game mechanic changes - that's why it's a beta, but please find a way so as not to alienate the people who got you this far.

 

Edit: Mixed up schematics and blueprints.

Edited by Neryman
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I would be totally fine with a wipe if underground ore was still a thing. I've tried the new FTUE and the prospect of starting from scratch is a no for me. I have no interest in establishing an auto-mining setup just to get going. Let's say I get to keep blueprints that aren't magic, okay fine. With underground ore, it would take some time but it would be up to me how fast that goes. I can mine alum till my hands bleed but I could have my base back up in a week. With auto mining, which I've never done, I estimate a month or more before I'd be able to start re-creating things. And not only that, it would take forever to accumulate the quantity that I need to reconstruct fully - the 'journey to wealth' is boring and monotonous, and the game shines after you can actually build stuff. I have no desire to go through that journey again.

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What I don't understand is unless NQ only plans are only for the current month each month, didn't they know this was on the table two months ago when they had all of us running around delete constructs and begging for core slot donations and just making life HELL. Wasn't it just two months ago when NQ said you will be able to regain all your constructions if you just use talent points and in 30days you be good? Didn't they know in 60 days they would be talking about wiping any and everything. So I ask you what the damn core cap drill. Why put us threw that unwanted stress if the end result is where we are today, talking about a WIPE. 

 

I should have listen when people were warning that the CORE Cap was a Soft Wipe and all Soft Wipes are Followed by Hard Wipes, I didn't believe them because I thought the CORE Cap was the reason we were trying to prevent a wipe. But never the less I was fooled. NQ you knew this was coming but yet you choose to still chose to put us threw needless stress just to SAVE on that Month's Server Cost.

 

.

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I am a paying customer with another 11 months on my current subs, I play daily for at least 5 hours since start, because of this wipe issue i have now stopped playing today until issue is resolved, at that point if you wipe all my talent points that I have paid for and all my ore i have collected, i will stop playing and ask visa to refund my payments as this is fraud after clearly stating no more wipes.

 

As to new player experience, if you also wipe out all the Orgs by them losing all constructs and money, how can they then help the new bros, this is one of the fundamental things that eve has, that currently Dual has as well, I am in DIA which is setup for such a thing, with ships, many parts to buy and ore buying above market rates, so everyone starts at zero again. With many users 2 years into developing these support mechanism what happens when they are lost ? 

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3 minutes ago, royituin said:

if you wipe all my talent points that I have paid for and all my ore i have collected, i will stop playing and ask visa to refund my payments as this is fraud after clearly stating no more wipes.

Every day you come and open TEST server. Test is by default NOT released server, and it is totally correct if they wipe, as they are right to do it so, it is not a fraud.

 

I am also paying more than one account for more than a year already, so what?

 - It is not the reason to call someone as fraud. I am actually thinking that it is a fraud to buy a service, enjoy it, and then request money back. (I am having court with one terrible employer who do this against me, - used my provided service and using court trying to get money back, - and I will win because what right).

 

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I'm sure I will be covering things mentioned before, but my 2cents:

 

Removal of Schematics: Does this mean the full removal of schematics as a game item from the game, or just the wiping of the currently held schematics in players assets/factories?

Removing schematics from the game entirely would be a poor choice, as they provide a progression gate through the industry gameplay. The removal of them would simply result in the situation we had early in Beta, that LEAD to the introduction of schematics, of players being able to easily set up 'omni-factories'. This will all but eliminate the need to interact with the game markets and would lead to an even more exaggerated situation of element hording, as this will be coupled to the now relative ease & rate of ore extraction.

 

Fixing 'exploits': I agree that imbalances caused by errors in costing, or alt parallel missioning should be addressed. However, this could have been done on a case by case basis when it came to light and can still be addressed individually, rather than a heavy-handed approach across the game population.

 

Beta-vet to Newbro advantage: This will always be present in a persistent MMO, as even with a full wipe, vets will have game knowledge that newbros don't and so will be able to progress more effectively. And then further down the line, as more new players join, the advantage of the 'earlier' new players will be above those just joined. A wipe will not effect this aspect of the game.

 

Planet 'quality': This needs clarifying as to whether this is an asset update for the rocks, trees & biomes as was applied to Jago, Teoma etc, or is this the system-wide implementation of the new planet tech that has been talked about? If the latter, would this involve a re-distribution of ore pools as well?

 

 

While the above may seem like I do not support a wipe, I actually do, but only if the reason for the wipe is a technical one on the server side, that cannot be done in any other way, or that would require significant manual dev involvement.

I can see that the introduction of the new planet tech would require a wipe in the same manner as the geo-reset, and the complete removal of schematics is a significant recode of the game (though technically a roll-back), but otherwise the issues raised in the devblog are not sufficient to justify a hard reset of the game world.

 

Should a wipe go ahead, then I would ask for the following :

Talent points are refunded, not wiped - this is because talent points are the only thing in the game that cannot be gained through exploits and are gained through paid game subscription time, rather than in-game activity. An acceptable compromise would be either a significant portion of points are refunded, or an accrual multiplier be available to Beta-vets, as a concession to participation in the Beta period.

 

Core Blueprints are retained - the principal activity of DU is creative building in a sandbox universe. The creative legacy of the Beta should be retained in some form, as it was from Alpha.

Issues relating to bugs with older Constructs will be addressed with the forthcoming element collision and de-activation mechanics - should a builder want the particular construct in the game, and functional, they would have to rework it, as with any other existing constructs.

 

Schematics should be retained in the game world - Schematics are a vital part of the game progression gating system and as such should remain. Otherwise DU will revert to the state it found itself in in early Beta, where players ran their own omni-factories and so had little incentive to buy from or sell to the game markets. Remember it was this situation that led to the introduction of schematics in the first place.

 

All players would start with 50M Quanta - This would allow a bootstrapping of the game economy, without handing the Beta-vets an unfair advantage of wealth. What players decide to do with this start-up cash is then their decision of how to progress (the starting Quanta amount is obviously something that can be set dependant on review of the games current economy).

 

Basic industry units are seeded at every market, including Haven - The principal factor in almost every game is how quickly a player feels they are 'into the game'. With a starting bank and seeded industries, a player can more quickly enter into the starting level of making their own stuff and setting up an income stream, outside of selling to ore bots.

This will give new players a sense of involvement in the game world that surface mining and selling to bots simply cannot match.

Coupled with the need to travel the system to purchase schematics to expand their industry, this will encourage the players to venture throughout the system, rather than stick to the inner planets, as this will introduce the game mechanic of flying through the system at a early stage of the game play.

It will also boost the market interaction of new players, again setting up the interaction with the market mechanics early.

 

 

Wipe or not, I will be sticking with DU, simply because the game world and its community in general are a fantastic place to be - the creative freedom and possibilities the game tech allows, as well as the support and encouragement of the community in response to the creations realised in this game, cannot be found anywhere else.

I am eager to see what will come, both before and after launch, and look forward to adapting & working through all the new game loops and systems that may come.

 

Draco

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21 hours ago, FatRillos said:

Having PAID for my sub since the start of Beta under the impression that there wasn't going to be a wipe, based on what you told us. I want my skill points and my BPs. I paid for that stuff. 

Excellent point! All of us Alpha and BETA backers paid for things based on a series of promises. The seconds those promises are broken the lawsuits will start. Thats just the start of the pending issue though. What educated potential buyer of the released game would ever care to waste their time investing both financially and in time, into assets acquired in a game over potentially years, when they know there is already a track record of NQ wiping everything people have invested in in the past? Bait and switch much?

Sure, there are things that are logically needed to give new players a fresh start....

Sanc is a wasteland of of forever claimed territories that will never be released, leading to no place for incoming players to "live". So a new planet, if not several, should be a no-brainer. Or redistribution needs to be a thing, and I can see territory scanner being completely disabled for a while as a good way to prevent all of the higher tier ore spots from being swallowed up by already existing hordes of scanners. 

I can see a value in a Quanta reset as well. There are certainly ways to get around that, but there are equally ways to stop mass investing to circumvent a pending loss. Make a daily spending limit of 1mill per player and stop all player to player funds transfers. Simple and effective! 

Of course a planet rest will be needed for all of the terrain changes that are pending. We have been through a few of those in the past and, from the player perspective, they were hardly the end of the world. Annoying, absolutely. But along with a terrain reset should/could come with a territory reset to give everyone a chance to re-spread out across the skies. Magic BPs for the win! 

Any thought of a talent reset is absurdly ignorant though! This is one of the key benefits we as early supporters made our early supported decisions on! Wiping out 1.5 years of investment is nothing but a slap in the face to those that made it possible for NQ to have a product to sell! Lets not even get in to the fact that this BS has already happened once before!! 

Taking away BPs is another that fits in-line almost completely with talent points. All of the work of thousands of people over tens of thousands of hours being completely erased nothing short of digital genocide, plain and simple! 

And then there is the thought outside the wipe of now removing schematics. Yes, the way schematics were introduced was stupid and terribly damaging to the community. Its not at all that schematics in and of themselves are bad. It was the intense financial burden that was dropping in our laps with no way to generate funds. The same issue is going to again chase off players the second the power systems are introduced months after release. Again, not at all a bad mechanic, but stupid to introduce in such a damaging way to literally everything that goes on in the game. 


 

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1 minute ago, Doombad said:

Hey Brandon. The purpose of this thread is to discuss pros/cons. You don’t have to participate if doing so is beyond your capacity to think.

You think NQ actually reads these forums? 

 

And all the pros and cons have been discussed a 1,000 times over. Everyone is well aware of all the pro's and cons (well I hope NQ is, I still feel this is a job for them, and not a labor of love). 

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16 minutes ago, RugesV said:

You think NQ actually reads these forums? 

I am sure at some level the forums are read or reviewed, the better point would not if they read them but if they care. Even if they NQ reads them just out of curiosity while doing the evil genius laugh at us. I do believe they are read. Now are they used to influence anything or change course direction that another question all together. 

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Full wipe is BS. Why would I want to start over with everything. Count me and my alts out. How does it help...new players and mega corporations...screw the lone wolf players who have dedicated a ton of time and effort to build there bases, ships and factories. I don't want to do it again. love the game, but not worth the headache to start over. Good luck with keeping peoples interest up with no cool bases, ship or space stations to visit.

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11 minutes ago, AbnRanger375 said:

FULL WIPE............PLEASE!!!!!

How long have you been playing if you don't mind me asking? Me I have been here playing and paying for almost 2 years I think. So when people yell WIPE I always wonder do they have to loose if anything

image.png.825f4720850d1af56ab6a9b7dbd1d1e4.png

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16 minutes ago, AbnRanger375 said:

FULL WIPE............PLEASE!!!!!

And I am not a Builder with Valuable Blueprints or a Massive Industry with Mega Factories, I couldn't build a ship to save my life and also solicited help from others to build my factories, but I am one hell of a miner, so WIPE means something to me.

 

image.png.a3b5bce585e3cb308231e8d5583620c2.png

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Just want to remind to everyone that any game's value is an entertainment you have while you play the game. You did something - you got entertained, you achieved something - you entertained. Wipe does not change that entertainment gain.

been here since beta release got this to loose:
image.png.285e8a9d12039ccb378819d7edf723c1.png

and I am not going to stop playing DU even if they wipe everything, because I do not see why the game will not keep me entertained.

Edited by AdmiralYolomoto
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19 minutes ago, Walter said:
26 minutes ago, AbnRanger375 said:

FULL WIPE............PLEASE!!!!!

 

And I love my space station that me and about 10 other players help me build over the last year or so  No I don't take the word FULL WIPE so lightly some of US actually have an attachment to the things we have build, purchased or created either alone or with friends. Not to get on you but Wipe is not just a WORD to some of us. Its the lost a little deeper than maybe some can see.
image.thumb.png.36a97dbc5dd0bee62ec19dc3c4ab5332.png

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