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SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread


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29 minutes ago, Quaideluz said:

NQ What interests me as a player is to play.
Playing in an MMO is about overcoming obstacles alone or with other players.
Playing in an MMO in beta is helping a game in the making or during this beta, it can have big changes (you have to accept big changes even if you have paid a beta subscription).
Playing Dual Universe in beta means believing in the future of this game and not counting its quantas, its talents, telling yourself about it.
To play after the WIPE announced by NQ is to believe that many new players will arrive and will not leave too late with the beta players. It is the arrival of many players that will allow NQ to continue paying for the servers on which DU is installed. Right now, I don't think there are enough of us to pay the bills (otherwise NQ wouldn't have put a subscription on the beta).
So if your amount of quantas or talents or construction is more important than the future of Dual Universe, it means that you are not a fan of Dual Universe but simply a player who wants to consume the game.
If NQ does not make quantas, talents and constructions disappear because too many beta players want to keep their achievements and want to keep a superiority over new players, new players will not come in droves and DU risks not surviving long time.

Fortunately, this is only one of many views and thus not universally valid.
Beta does not necessarily mean big changes, but fine-tuning. What is currently happening in DualUniverse would rather be classified as alpha, since basic game content and mechanics are still being worked on and tried out, and are sometimes added to the game or taken out again. (Schematics, MiningUnits, PlanetOre...)
As for a beta otherwise, certainly many players are aware that you should consider this as a kind of test scenario. In contrast to this, however, is the fact that the beta was not presented as a normal beta, but as a soft release, in which the players can build up something in advance through the paid subscription and this is then secured by BPs. The players themselves already support the game with their subscription.
You also don't have to overcome obstacles in the game, what makes them think you would have to overcome obstacles solo or in a group in an "MMO"?
DualUniverse is primarily a voxel sandbox with PvP possibilities. What obstacles are there, then? It's not a typical mmo(rpg) where obstacles in the form of dungeons, raids, world bosses or an equipment level are a requirement or goal. In DualUniverse there is not even a serious "goal" where you have to run after it like in World of Warcraft to reach it first. Worldfirstkill! Yay!...no, there isn't. But we can build great things in DualUniverse very relaxed and without time pressure. Spend days, weeks, even years on it, each player as he likes it best.

 

 

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A lot of games give out free Bata keys to testers to give to their friends to promote a game in development. 

 

I don't know how many keys like that NQ decided to give out.  But the only Beta key i got was the one that NQ sold to me as part of the Kickstarter pledge.

 

Due to the fact that they sold it to me, i kind of feel entitled to do whatever i want with it.

 

When i activated it, my only goals was to have a second account.  I really wasn't looking to get anything for free.  I was fully expecting to start paying a subscription on both accounts as soon as possible.

 

NQ's decision to put themselves in the position to not be able to charge me for either of those accounts is on them.

 

I would like to start paying for both of them as soon as possible.  The sooner the better.

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In my opinion, the obstacles are for a new player: it's passing his tutorial, going to the nearest market with his speeder, building an airplane, then an atmospheric and spaceship, understanding the construction of a factory, piloting a spaceship with an atmospheric entrance and build a base.
When a new player manages to do this, they are no longer a new player and have the full potential of Dual Universe at their fingertips.

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after a short period of consideration:

Full wipe or no wipe are two legit options, but nothing in the middle.

 

( if a wipe should occure, no BP or magic BP should be created.  This would create a disadvantage for people without "famous" names/BP's)

 

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7 hours ago, Overstimuloredom said:

For me, personally, it would be a much easier swallow if we went back to closed servers that occasionally open like in alpha, give 'em a few years, then come back to a "new game" wiped on launch...

 

I'd be good with that.  Once a month 72-96 hour not guaranteed test periods like we had before.

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5 hours ago, Zarcata said:

I myself am not yet fully aware of what kind of players I would like to attract and retain permanently in the first place. Sure, superficially a mixture of Eve and Minecraft players,...but how should one be able to lure those here? Why not take more players with other interests on board?

 

I always visioned the "Dual" in Dual Universe to be Eve and Space Engineers...

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I don't really understand why you would want to take anything away from players at all. DualUniverse should be constantly expanded anyway, more planets, more solar systems....so why is it so hard to introduce the so often suggested second solar system for new players or just use the new starter moon already used on the pts for new players to test themselves out there and then join the experienced players when they want to and feel ready for it.

You don't have to take anything away from anyone, since there would be no advantage or disadvantage anyway, considering that there are no pre-set goals in the game, but everyone can find and create their own way. By taking away the earned content of the players, one only stirs up hatred and ill will, it would be even worse if one would only take away parts in order to play off groups of players against each other.

If it's purely about the planet surfaces, they should accommodate us players by giving us time to move our buildings into space. It would make sense if you could introduce a new feature where you can change the core of a construct. So a static core can be replaced by a space core.

Edited by Zarcata
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At one point in time, we were Alpha-Testers, and we did so knowing there would be Wipes, it was expected to improve the game itself.  When you transitioned us to Beta, we became PLAYERs, not TESTERs; then NQ began collecting subscription money - it was at that point NQ removed the option of a wipe and a 100% sustainable environment.  It won't work! 

 

NQ attempting to justify a 100% Wipe will ruin the game entirely.  Example:  Games like Eve or WoW have a long-standing community of players who have built up wealth over their playing-years.  Is that no different than what you have in DU right now?   "A community of long-term players who have built a society to play in, all the while waiting for New Players to join-in the fun?"  It's the same thing.  ALLLL of those games have acquired new subscriptions in a game that has extremely wealthy and fortified Players and Organizations alike. 

I am a no-wipe fan.  Clean-up what you need to for balancing or whatever, but wiping the server and starting anew is pointless. 

 

NQ - We stuck with you through Beta and amassed our wealth and place in the game to help you provide an enjoyable platform for Future Players.  Let it Ride! 

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I’ve been trying for some time to avoid posting much on this topic, and my stance has always been that of no wipe at all. NQ has earned many a sub since they became available, operating off of the inference that there would be no wipes barring a catastrophic necessity. Many backers, myself included, will still run at least an alt sub or two come launch. Even with DACs, backers will be subscribers too. I think if they pin their hopes solely on new players, at the expense of backers/beta players, they’ll ultimately lose more than they stand to gain.

 

However, part of me sympathizes with NQ’s plight of trying to release the best possible game at launch to make a positive impression on new players, somehow without causing a mass exodus of players already heavily invested in the game.

 

At this point, I feel no wipes works against that goal, but so does a full wipe (which I am vehemently against and would cancel/unsub alts if it happened - my sons also play this game and share the sentiment). I feel that the players ARE the content and maintaining as much carry over from beta as possible only benefits new players, so long as it isn’t at the expense of the game’s quality at launch.

 

Concepts like “fairness” are questionable to me, though. You ultimately can’t create it long term, because you cannot enforce it. You can only try and give every player the same opportunity, which everyone has. New players will find their time rewarded the same way beta players found theirs. I’m also unsure about what a “balanced economy” actually consists of and looks like in NQs eyes. Some with always have more than others - how does a wipe actually lead to that goal.

 

That said, here is my devils advocate approach to a solution, which reflects the most compromise/sacrifice I am personally willing to make without leaving and not looking back:

 

Talents: 

Wipe talents. Pitchforks down, please. Afterwards, pre-launch players will start with ALL QoL like talents at max.
 

Container range, athletics, personal core units, tool efficiency. Anything that doesn’t represent an advantage in combat and industry or the like, that can cut down the time getting back on their feet and working towards their specialty.

 

Then, add a pool of XP based on how many months they had an active account during beta. Like 200k/month. This should give vets something to work with, without enabling them the option of doing everything imaginable right out of the gate.

 

Finally, add additional tiers to industry talents, 5-10 total, to further incentivize specialization. Increase talent costs for those tiers, and make those massive margins something to unlock with considerable dedication.

 

Schematics:

Delete them and just rip the band aid off. No compensation sadly, because many were acquired in ill gotten fashion.

 

Replace them with MUCH lower cost “licenses” in game, that allow a finite amount of uses before expiring. You could even have different length variants at different costs. This would not be an item inserted into an industry unit, but rather a timed unlock for characters. It would essentially grant any industry unit owned by a player the ability to produce x product for y time. No plunking them into individual units, which saves time.

 

Anything T1 can be nanocrafted for free. This should make the cost entry to industry more manageable for new players, while creating a more sustainable quanta sink long term.

 

Dynamic constructs:

Each player may keep their compactified constructs and one designated “flagship” dynamic construct. This is like flagging a tile as HQ. Just r-click it in menu in the same manner. This vessel will then be magic BPd sans any container content, and will be in your inventory at launch. All other dynamics you own would become core BPs, DRM intact.

 

Ideally, there would be a mechanic in place where any elements deployed with the construct would have a special tag, making it where they couldn’t be removed - only deleted. That way you can edit it, without the “I’m gonna hoard 100 exotics” loophole. Any easier work around would be to simply make it unable to be edited, beyond lua.

 

The flagship designation could remain in game, actually. It would enable one dynamic you own to become a magic BP, in the event it becomes abandoned anywhere in game. Everything else goes to the vultures.

 

Territory and static construct wipes:

Planet resets and the resulting visual improvements make this justified IMO. This may need to occur in a few offline “phases” to do properly.

 

First of all, all land ownership is wiped  before terrestrial constructs.  Any HQ tiles wiped as a result of the reset will refund 500k quanta and one TU per HQ tile lost. TUs would probably need weight substantially reduced to accommodate this, or simply make a special no weight version for this purpose. (NQ could up the ante and throw in a container M and four L mining units, but whatevs) This offsets the surface cost of resettlement and gives you the basics required to do so.


Then, all containers will have their contents deleted. 


Finally,

Any regular static with either containers, flight elements, and/or industry becomes a core BP. Your factories can be rebuilt when you have the mats, ensuring you won’t have to relink and set up anything.

 

 

Any regular static without industry, flight, or container elements becomes a magic BP.

 

Space statics would follow the same rule set.

 

Quantas… I’m all for some kind of starting cap, like 250m-1b. This is the more difficult one to pin down. It comes down to that whole fairness thing that I think is a silly notion. However, there’s no denying some people acquired wealthy unfairly, even if it doesn’t necessarily affect anyone else directly.

 

Thats all I can think of at the moment. 🤷‍♂️ 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Sync said:

NQ attempting to justify a 100% Wipe will ruin the game entirely. 

 

It won't ruin the game but it will not be a viable option because NQ started requiring monthly paymenst to have access which comes with obligation fro m their end. It's not uncommon, Actually more common that not, to wipe a game prior to actual release when coming out of beeta. 

I do not think anyone really expects a full/global wipe. A partial one as has been discussed well and good by now is very much likely to happen though.

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26 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

 

It won't ruin the game but it will not be a viable option because NQ started requiring monthly paymenst to have access which comes with obligation fro m their end. It's not uncommon, Actually more common that not, to wipe a game prior to actual release when coming out of beeta. 

I do not think anyone really expects a full/global wipe. A partial one as has been discussed well and good by now is very much likely to happen though.

But their post was clearly designed to signal to everyone that a full wipe is going to happen? All the options had negatives listed against them except full wipe, and they listed the most positives against full wipe.

 

Surely they’ve told us the answer already, or am I missing soemthing? Everyone seems to be in denial!

 

 

Edited by Shredder
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20 minutes ago, Shredder said:

But their post was clearly designed to signal to everyone that a full wipe is going to happen?

I found the argumentation for a full wipe to be very weak an dthe pros they men tion apply exactly the same way towards a partial wipe. I think NQ is tripping over theior own words in trying to be as vague and convoluted as possible, saying basically nothing with a lot of words.

 

I mentioned this early in the thread but I really only see two options;

  1. No wipe
  2. A partial wipe where everything is reset, accrued talent points get returned to the pool and blueprints for the constructs you created put in inventory.

 

A few things stand out in the post:

  • They may remove schematics, which is a cheap cop out for the initial implementation of a good idea in a bad way.
  • They may finally bring the new planet tech to the game which is good. I think that Haven uses that tech as it looks and "feels" different and better that the existing planets

 

Both options require a wipe of the kind I believe most who are in favour of a wipe prefer,  (option 2 above)

 

I honestly can't see NQ not doing a wipe, if that is the plan they would have come out and say so to end the discussion. And I can't imagine the call on this has not been made yet, details may still be "discussed internally" but the decision to wipe (and when) has been made a good while back.

 

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Hello NQ !

 

Je ne dis pas non à un Wipe total, mais il serait sympa de donner un petit coup de pouce pour repartir de Zero, notamment pour les talents et, malgré que certains joueurs soient milliardaires, ce qui pourrait nuire à la nouvelle économie, repartir avec une petite avance de Quanta$ confortable. Par petit pas trop quand même vu le nombre d'heures passées à accumuler les talents et les Quantas :) 

 

Un petit "Cons" tout de même pour ce Wipe : cela permettrait d'avoir déjà une bonne base de départ et rendrait plus attrayant le jeu pour les nouveaux arrivant en voyant un peu ce qui est possible de faire (surtout quand on voit le travail accompli par de nombreux joueurs que ce soit sur le Lua, les vaisseaux ou bâtiments). 

 

Bon courage pour le choix !

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9 hours ago, kulkija said:

 

I slightly disagree.

1st: Using other players main account is against EULA

 

There has been no extra beta-key giveaway by NQ.

Do you have source for this.

 

No beta-keys are "free". They were supposed to be gifted, so if someone has exploited that and got lots of those it is a shame. How ever event those were not free.

 

 

 

 

All very good points.  You are almost certainly correct and absolutely no EULA violations took place.  Every. single. beta. key. was. gifted. to. another. player.

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On 4/22/2022 at 5:09 PM, Pleione said:

 

I'm sensing a LOT of frustration from Blaze.  Believe he gained interest in the game in 2016 - 6 years ago now and still is not seeing many things originally promised.  Myself, I joined in early 2018, around the time one would take work vacation days to be able to play for 72 to 96 hours once a month or so.  Recall telling my wife "Have a great weekend, see you in a couple of days" when the first 48 hour test came out - and yeah, I played 32 of those 48 hours (with sometimes hourly server reboots, launching queues with 1000s of players, etc.). 

 

Blaze is VERY practical and has historically shown light on NQ finances he has scrapped together from public sources.  Like most things, dreams are great, but accomplishing those dreams cost money - something NQ doesn't have a lot of right now, so I think he is seeing things through those lenses - which is, well, realistic.  It is, after all, the FBI M.O. - follow the money, so as an approach is well founded.

 

I know for a fact (because I worked with him on a few efforts) that we have TRIED to help NQ, but JC in particular not only had a vision for the game, but had a specific vision for how the game should be played, and anything out side of that was simply ignored.  That made the game less and less a sandbox for many of us.  Just for perspective, in the early Alpha days, it was perfectly reasonable to have the goal of building a Stargate Universe class ship that could go around and build some future gate technology for use between solar systems.  That got nibbled away, piece by piece, often in thinly veiled excuses which translated to "current system eats too many resources, need to cut cost".

 

Personally almost choked on the first phrase of this thread.  NQ has been one of the LEAST transparent companies I've worked with in almost 50 years of gaming (started in 1975).  We love what DU started out as, and have watched that slowly be chipped away until its barely recognizable.  We have also tried, MANY MANY times, via Discord, via this forum, via tickets, via direct mail, etc. to help with suggestions, most often with little more than a "this suggestion will be forwarded" and no other word or action seen.  Sadly "this suggestion will be forwarded" is the most positive response personally seen - most of the time hours, days, and sometimes weeks of volunteer work behind suggestions were simply ignored.

 

Guess this is mostly a vent, but please do try to understand some of the history of our efforts.

 

edit:  Blaze posted his own reply above when I was typing this.

 

I don't really disagree with any of this, or anything Blaze said per-se (I could probably pick at points but in general they're right).  And I get the frustration, I'm frustrated too and as I said I've certainly posted this sort of doom-and-gloom type of stuff myself.  It's just that all the negativity is wearing me out and I think making sure we try to add a suggestion or at least something positive along with the griping would be a good habit to get into.

 

After all, if we convince NQ that they have irredeemably messed it up and there's no way back they might as well just shut the whole thing off now right?  And I don't think any of us want that, and that in itself should tell us that any mistakes which are made are not really irredeemable because *we are all still here talking about it*.

 

We all know what the mistakes were and stating the obvious doesn't really move anything forward does it?

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On 4/22/2022 at 11:42 AM, NQ-Nyota said:

 

Hey everyone!

 

We wanted to let everyone know that the internal discussions are still ongoing. We have been reading your feedback (all of it - really!), and we wanted to express our sincere thanks to everyone for joining in the discussion.

 

We have also been gathering your questions (please continue asking them if they haven't already been asked in this thread) and we'll do our best to have some answers for you as soon as we can.

 

Thanks again, we really do appreciate all of the feedback. ❤️

How can the discussion still be ongoing after several months?

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10 hours ago, blazemonger said:

I think NQ is tripping over theior own words in trying to be as vague and convoluted as possible, saying basically nothing with a lot of words.

I think it's incredibly difficult to translate correctly from French to English or to really express what you really mean and feel and then maybe translate again into a language of the different players, for example: German, Russian,....

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7 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

After all, if we convince NQ that they have irredeemably messed it up and there's no way back they might as well just shut the whole thing off now right? 


I'm not sure NQ really wants to have a "discussion" with us, but rather just give us some insight into what "positions" are on their table for internal discussion.
Similar could be seen from the last published "discussion topic, where it was made clear that the topic itself is not just co-discussion, but purely for noting.
What could be done here, however, is to find other positions and ideas that NQ may not have thought of or think are unimportant.

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1 hour ago, Zarcata said:

I think it's incredibly difficult to translate correctly from French to English or to really express what you really mean and feel and then maybe translate again into a language of the different players, for example: German, Russian,....

That would just be silly, When you operate in a global encironment, not having a writer/community management staffer who can properly express the views, vision or direction for the company in plain English is not an acceptable excuse. Also it is not about what the person writing this means ofr feels, it has nothing to do with any personal opinion or attachment. This is not an editorial post, it is a company publication around a very hot and volatile topic.

I am not saying this is the case here, even when there is enough indicators that NQ operates mostly in French internally and often misses the mark on translating or naming any number of things in game. This as well (IMO) comes down to th elack of a project manager who can review and question design choices and communication being made.

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hi, here would be my question to NQ team:

You write: - A complete wipe (except blueprints) with solutions to allow old players to quickly rebuild their favorite constructs through various means.

 

This would favor only builders, the people who made industry and grind the quantas for schematics are not considered. This is an unfair advantage for master builders. Also people who have made advanced Lua scripts will be favored since they have local backups.

 

For me there are only two options, complete wipe including blueprints (where Lua scripters still have a big advantage) or no wipe.

 

One more note from me, I joined DU at the end of the alpha because I didn't want to play alphas anymore and where did I end up, in an alpha, I joined because they promised a persistent world. As an entrepreneur you should make final decisions and not hesitate, then the customers know where they stand.

 

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11 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

I'm frustrated too and as I said I've certainly posted this sort of doom-and-gloom type of stuff myself.  It's just that all the negativity is wearing me out and I think making sure we try to add a suggestion or at least something positive along with the griping would be a good habit to get into.

 

I always make a point of giving credit when credit is due. The problems is just that when it comes to NQ, it does not happen that often..

And the company developing a game is the only entity that to some degree can control the general mood for a community. And as such it if safe to say that the current mood is 100% a result of their actions both past and present.

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