Jump to content

SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

Recommended Posts

With my credits to the last posts from Blaze, Quaideluz and Pleione

 

I did read the post from Quaideluz with no translation and I have to admit, it was hard for my poor francais but I did get most of it - the translate from Pleione told me the rest ..

 

I well remember back to the days trying to leave Sanctuary to get to its moon to get some spice.

It was hard - but this kindergarden helped me a lot to learn - and finally not just get to the moon but also coming back.

 

This was a perfect lession for my and my buddies. Trial an error. 

 

So, I basically disagree @Quaideluz.

 

Sanctuary was hard, but this was the way to learn. After Sanctuary - including the possibilities to craft all shit I needed using Nano or Industries - helped me to go to Alioth. Alioth was much easier for me after the Sancturary lessions.

 

My conclusion. Let ppl find out how the things work on Sanctuary. No Schematics there please. It was such a good tutorial for my and my friends. No other Tutos needed. If you may lift of there, and bring back some ore, you're ready to stand as a DU rookie for anything further.

 

TLTR; Sanctuary was important IMO. Learning hard. Better then any tutorial. If NQ WIPEs - please let have new players the chance to grow on Sanctuary and feel the pain. Its a hard challenge I know. But I think it was my best lession back in those days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have played since Beta day 1. I have loved the game, building and mining mostly. But to be clear, wipe any of my talent points and I quit. There were no exploits involved in my (or anyone else's) talent points, simply time invested in training them. I understand the need to reset the economy, people got rich on exploits. For me, I mined and refined almost all my own ore and built almost all of my ships and my large base on Sanctuary. No exploits used or needed, I worked towards what I have.. Wiping all my constructs/resources/Quanta is simply unfair. There is an implicit contract between game and player that things one worked hard for are not just erased. A full wipe I feel violates this, and how will new players trust it will not happened to them. There is also the erasure of all the amazing player made constructs that will not be available for new players to awe at and work towards building themselves (like I did), and the large exodus of experienced players and orgs removing a new players chance to learn from a veteran players experience.

 

Again, wipe any of my talent points, I am gone. Leave my talent points, wipe everything else and I am probably gone. As a compromise, let players start with their blueprints and X amount of Quanta based on how many months they have played. 10 million for each month? Find a way to make your experienced players that have supported DU want to stay. Or not only will any new player gain be offset by veteran player losses, new players will not stay long if they see NQ can not be trusted. 

 

If I have to completely start over and can not trust NQ, I will start someplace else. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Honvik said:

😎 Removing alts (free Beta Keys).  Obviously if a wipe happens this will force people to buy their alts or not.  Legit doesnt bother me if someone pays for 10 alts to mission run.  Situation we are in is some people have 80 Beta account alts for free!!!

 

image.png.3bde25ed15cc8fd80037052ae5038c71.png

 

180 euro = main + 3 beta accounts

80 accounts = 3600 euro

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Aleksandr said:

image.png.3bde25ed15cc8fd80037052ae5038c71.png

 

180 euro = main + 3 beta accounts

80 accounts = 3600 euro

 

 

 He says that because for some reason, it was decided it was ok to sell beta keys for quanta. The beta keys should of only had X time on them, and should of been used for their intended use (get a friend into the game and into a paying account eventually). They just ended up being used for alts for missions and talent points. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, 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. ❤️

NQ-Nyota,
As a player that started just after Beta started and had logged on and played every single day up until this thread started (I have not logged on since-possibly permanently done depending on this decision) I am happy to provide my feedback. Note that I have paid for my subscription(s), and did not have any free beta keys. Find what I believe are the main issues and recommendations below. Just a thought to keep in mind however....anything you do confers advantage to someone. That includes a full wipe. You can't wipe organization discord channels you don't control, so a full wipe absolutely provides MASSIVE advantage to existing large orgs simply because they are already organized and can pool resources to rebuild faster than anyone else possibly could. Nothing you can do will prevent that in any way from happening. For the 'full wipe' crowd, I think some honestly believe that is best, I can respect that, but some are advocating that strictly so they can dominate some aspect (e.g. PvP) of the game where having a large cooperative player base will vastly outperform anyone else that tries to compete regardless of wipe status, but even more so after a full wipe. You need to balance some degree of leveling with the need to keep some part of your existing player base by not making it to hard for single players or smaller orgs to restart or they will give up and go away.

Issues:


1 Talent Points: Given a paid subscription, wipe of talent point is a non-starter for me. Since I have paid for the subscription, you would be removing value that can only be obtain through payment of real-world money over time. I could MAYBE see the argument for removing talent points for free beta keys, but any removal of talent points would feel, to me at least, like theft. Other people obviously feel differently about that, but that issue is a non-negotiable from my perspective, at least for anyone that has been paying for a subscription. 


2. Territory/Quanta reset: I can understand quanta wipe, I can understand territory reset where  players need to reclaim territory. Both of those are reasonable, and probably necessary at this point given some extremely poor decisions (e.g. WTF on auto-assigning 5 HQ tiles....most of the junk that needed cleaning up belonged to players that had less than 5 tiles anyway, so you destroyed any positive effect of the rent and cleanup mechanics with that one....sorry that was a terrible decision, made at the last minute). 


3. Schematics: The only reason I can think of that you now want to remove schematics is that someone did the math like I did and went 'whoa' when they saw the number for how long it would take to restart any reasonable economy or even create the capability to build most elements if everything was wiped and you had to restart the economy from scratch. With the mission nerfs you are putting in, there simply won't be enough quanta in game to finance schematic purchases to rebuild factories fast enough, at least before any new players get frustrated and bail. With the new resource distribution and lack of a 'grindable' mining mechanic elements that are now common and inexpensive would be nearly impossible to build for weeks or months, at least in any quantity. The small number of players and large orgs that might do so would effectively have a near monopoly on advanced through exotic elements (including you know warp drives and warp cells) and would get WAY richer than most are now. Sooooo, you remove schematics so more people can build by taking the brakes off, but run into the same situation pre-schematics where no one really needs to participate in an active market. 


4. Economy restart: You have backed yourself into the corner on this one with the resource distribution and auto-miners with Demeter. A number of people pointed this out in the pre-Demeter comments, but apparently you all missed that. The only change that was made was to allow the DSAT to be build with lower tier ore which makes it theoretically possible to restart the economy, just very very slow. Had you made the recipe for autominers to only rely on ore from 1 tier down from what the miner mines (that was recommended pre-Demeter) a economy bootstrap would be MUCH faster. Restarting the economy from a complete wipe will be VERY time consuming, even without schematics and any benefit you hope to gain from new players at launch is likely to evaporate quickly since there simply won't be easily available stuff. This is a hard game to master and is only viable for new players in many cases with help from existing players/orgs OR the availability of relatively cheap parts/elements on the market. Have you looked at a factory progression/restart from a complete wipe to building warp beacons? I have, I know I could do it, but I am seriously questioning why I would want to as it would be in no way fun or enjoyable, just a painful slog to get back to the bare minimums. It requires layers of bootstrapping. See item 3 on schematics....removing schematics probably puts this in the realm of weeks and that is just because of build times delaying progression and assumes ore is actually available in quantity, which i am not sure of.  However, regularly availability in the markets for anything higher than 'uncommon' elements could easily be months due to scarcity and price gouging for what is available. I would be shocked if the first warp drives that hit the market were priced under 10M each, and it stayed that way for some time. Keeping schematics puts this likely at months, if not the better part of a year unless you dropped schematic prices to almost nothing. A small number of players will be able to ramp up SOME production in either case, but there will be no common or reasonably priced availability for most elements for a LONG time. Orgs that band together will go quicker, but it will still be weeks or months before their internal needs are met.  Just building the industry units to build more industry units to build higher tier industry units will take a long time any way you cut it. The ONLY way you have left to get higher tier ore is asteroid mining, at least until there is enough availability to start putting out autominers, but even then there won't be nearly enough in operation to meet demand for weeks or months, which means huge inflation and price gouging and the same people that are currently rich getting rich again with no effective change.


Bottom line here, your tone in the devblog clearly indicated that a full wipe was the preferred decision of whomever wrote it. (Yes we have all used the 'present non-viable/flawed options first' then the preferred choice last approach to shape a decision process. Whoever wrote the post did exactly that, whether they realized it or not) but I don't think you understand how non-viable a complete wipe is given the current factory and resource mechanics.


5. Player advantage: I am going to be blunt here, in the immortal words of one of my org mates: "Did you win DU yet?". If you don't get it you don't get it, but this was supposed to be an open world sandbox game with persistent creations but it is also an MMO. People that want to acquire stuff will do so, no matter what, but most of your creative player base just wants to build stuff and have Friday night races and such. Be careful when you 'remove advantage' since the starting point with the current game is NOT anything like the starting point when Beta started. If you remove all the 'stuff' from the economy, well, see item 4 above. Bit of a potential nightmare there, probably the quickest way to kill the game for good. A lot of veteran players will feel betrayed and not come back, and the economy restart....well it might not restart, at least not the way you think it will, which will bleed off any new players quicker than you think is possible. What you should really be focusing on is enabling new players, not looking for ways to nerf existing players, or at least some balance of the two. You have a hard call here, but you seriously need to think about balancing the benefits new players get from the large number of existing players willing to help them out, because those existing players HAVE resources and the time to help and are not scrambling to build the next tier autominer against the 'level playing field' you seem to want to create where everyone is scrambling for limited resources for potentially months. Any leveling you do accomplish will be short lived at best, and I honestly don't know if it will provide some marginal benefit or kill the game within 6 months. Also, 'removing advantage' really does not work. It will only benefit a small number of large orgs that will be able to immediately pool resources and will simply dominate everything, and single players will be left worse off than before. By 'removing advantage' you run the risk of actually giving ALL the advantage to a small number of large orgs, which is probably why a good quantity of the people that advocate for a full wipe are doing so, they know that your approach to 'leveling the playing field' will give them (or their org...you know who they are) a HUGE advantage over everyone NOT part of a large org. Well, everyone else could also band together you say....but what about the new players that don't know they need to do that. There is no simple answer here, but actually zeroing out what you apparently perceive as advantages, simply gives certain player groups their own MASSIVE advantages. Bottom line, whatever you do, some people or groups will start with massive advantages, but if you get to extreme with trying to level things, you will alienate a significant portion of the dwindling hardcore player base and they will leave, while the playing field will be even less 'even' than it was before.


6. Trust: You don't have it with your existing player base. New players get:

time mark 10:34. Unfortunately, this the only 'up and coming space sim' video where I have even seen DU even mentioned, and the mention is not good in this case.  I also have a hard time disagreeing with TheYamiks on this one, as much as I would like to do so. This contributes to frustration and fatigue on your existing player base and will drive off any hope of new players. There is a strong perception that when you do listen to players it is to a very small minority of very vocal players in the official discord echo chamber. When is the last time you actually put out a player base wide survey with meaningful questions to your entire player base? (That is clearly a rhetorical question, the answer being 'never') There are the occasional pop up surveys in-game that don't really cover anything substantive, but that is really it. Example, from all prior communications, the party line has always been along the lines of, we will avoid a wipe at all costs, but if we do, veteran/beta players will keep something and I am pretty sure talent points were explicitly part of that something or at least heavily implied. Yet that was CLEARLY not my takeaway from this dev note, which dropped talent points squarely in the 'advantages we need to nerf' category. It was also pretty clearly preferring a full wipe the way the  pros/cons were shaped to make that appear the only viable solution. That is why since last week I no longer log in every single day like I did for more than a year and a half, and depending on what your decisions are here, I may not ever log in again. All my subscription(s) have now had auto-renew turned off for this simple reason, I don't trust NQ to do what they say. I am not unrecoverable as a customer, but you need to convince me it is worth my time to come back.

 

Recommendations:


1. Talent points: leave them alone or reset them into a pool that can be re-assigned, at least for paid subscriptions. Harder call on free beta keys, but at least an option to convert to a paid account is probably in order there. Will they provide an 'advantage', sure, but not that huge of one in most areas. If you are doing an economy reset, your industrial players will absolutely need every single talent point they can get if you want the economy restarted within months vice a year. The ONLY place there might be an 'advantage' issue is the PvP specific talents. Training single weapon or function talent trees for PvP functions would likely be possible before the parts become readily available to take advantage of them anyway. The large PvP orgs would likely WANT you to wipe talent points since they have a large enough player base to quickly rebuild specialized talents and will simply dominate everyone anyway within 2-4 weeks no matter what you do here. 


2. Territory/Quanta reset: Unfortunately, I think you have to do this and wipe territories and quanta. Had you NOT auto-assigned HQ tiles to effectively inactive players, or used a better approach to cleaning up dynamic constructs it might have been possible to keep territories, but NQ messed that up hard and I don't think there is any other option there. Quanta is a harder question. Due to the previous mechanics, you likely need to get most of it out of the game, BUT with the mission nerfs, if schematics are left in, there is a problem for ramping up the economy again if you don't include new quanta injection. Unless you are adding purchase bots back in to the markets for things other than tier 1 ore, capital injection into a restarting economy is going to be an issue.  I don't  know that there is a good answer there, so nuking territories and quanta from orbit is probably as viable as any other approach and I don't think there really is a 'good' solution here, only different levels of 'bad'.


3. Schematics. I think you screwed yourself and all of us on this one. With the current resource distribution and more limited quanta injection due to mission nerfing, leaving them in at anything like the current costs significantly delays any sort of economy restart. However, there is a need for a mechanic that requires capital investment in industry, otherwise there won't be an economy, and people will just build their own stuff. If you leave them in, reduce costs significantly and for gods sake just allow them to be purchased on any market, making people run around to different planets for schematics does nothing useful other than waste time and annoy people. If you remove them, the way resources are distributed now will probably provide the short term 'brakes' that limit everyone from building their own factory. That MIGHT be enough in the long term, I don't claim to know the answer there, but nuking them MIGHT be OK but I am wary of that as to simple an answer to a complex question.


4. Economy restart/peoples stuff: This one is problematic. However, there could be a partial solution. If you allow each player to bring over a limited volume of items that they select, this could mitigate somewhat the economy jumpstart issue. Allowing everyone to bring unlimited items would be terrible, but if each player can select some volume that can be retained, this possibly addresses economy restart. If each player got a 'magic container' of fixed volume or even say a Sm or XS static core they could pack to their preference this would allow a economic restart much quicker, and how 'successful' each player would be is dependent on the choices they make on what to bring. I am not sure what the correct volume would be, but probably no more than you be able to pack into a Med core WITHOUT allowing containers, or a SM or XS allowing containers. Would some players get ahead doing this, of course, that that is going to happen no matter what, and part of that would depend on how good their decision were on what to bring. Could someone pack 20 warp drives (or even 100) and get rich....maybe unless everyone else did the same thing, and lets be honest, 100 warp drives would be a drop in the bucket on what the demand would be after a reset and how rich would they get when no one had any money to start? Miners would bring autominers over, industrialists would bring industry machines over, ship parts would be available in some quantity. As long as the total volume for each account is limited, whatever comes over is it until a new industrial base is created, so some people would have an 'advantage' but a limited one at best. If you pack your volume with industry machines, you can have a factory up quicker, assuming someone else brought miners and is mining resources for you. If you pack your volume with warp drives, you get an immediate influx of cash, to the extent that people have cash to spend, but no long-term benefit after that. If someone wants to use their volume to bring over a bunch of space engine XL, great, but those take up a lot of volume, so there would simply not be a lot anyone could bring if the volume is limited so it is self-limiting based on the number of paid accounts. It will disproportionally advantage large orgs, but that is going to happen anyway with a full wipe, so this would at least allow single players or smaller orgs to avoid a from-nothing bootstrap and possibly encourage people to stay that would otherwise leave. This would introduce more diversity of products and get different sectors of the economy working faster than a one-size-fits-none standard starter pack for veteran players and would be an almost interesting mini-game in itself....kind of: :"you have to pack one bag to live on a desert isle for a year, what do you bring? Choose wisely" where any advantage that is accrued is based almost solely on peoples game play type and decisions. If you feel it is necessary to balance that for new players, give them a standard starter kit which the new FTUE is essentially doing anyway but don't give that to veteran players or make it an option for them to do one or the other. That probably levels things about as well as possible while adding enough diversity to engage different player types, restart some of the economy faster,  and retain at least some of the people that will simply not come back with a full wipe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, CyberDay said:

 He says that because for some reason, it was decided it was ok to sell beta keys for quanta. The beta keys should of only had X time on them, and should of been used for their intended use (get a friend into the game and into a paying account eventually). They just ended up being used for alts for missions and talent points. 

 

This 100%

 

If someone is subbing for alts I'm not bothered they are putting in £££.  Unfortunately majority of alts out there are th3 free unlimited time ones from alpha packs etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Kveen00 said:

NQ-Nyota,
As a player that started just after Beta started and had logged on and played every single day up until this thread started (I have not logged on since-possibly permanently done depending on this decision) I am happy to provide my feedback. Note that I have paid for my subscription(s), and did not have any free beta keys. Find what I believe are the main issues and recommendations below. Just a thought to keep in mind however....anything you do confers advantage to someone. That includes a full wipe. You can't wipe organization discord channels you don't control, so a full wipe absolutely provides MASSIVE advantage to existing large orgs simply because they are already organized and can pool resources to rebuild faster than anyone else possibly could. Nothing you can do will prevent that in any way from happening. For the 'full wipe' crowd, I think some honestly believe that is best, I can respect that, but some are advocating that strictly so they can dominate some aspect (e.g. PvP) of the game where having a large cooperative player base will vastly outperform anyone else that tries to compete regardless of wipe status, but even more so after a full wipe. You need to balance some degree of leveling with the need to keep some part of your existing player base by not making it to hard for single players or smaller orgs to restart or they will give up and go away.

Issues:


1 Talent Points: Given a paid subscription, wipe of talent point is a non-starter for me. Since I have paid for the subscription, you would be removing value that can only be obtain through payment of real-world money over time. I could MAYBE see the argument for removing talent points for free beta keys, but any removal of talent points would feel, to me at least, like theft. Other people obviously feel differently about that, but that issue is a non-negotiable from my perspective, at least for anyone that has been paying for a subscription. 


2. Territory/Quanta reset: I can understand quanta wipe, I can understand territory reset where  players need to reclaim territory. Both of those are reasonable, and probably necessary at this point given some extremely poor decisions (e.g. WTF on auto-assigning 5 HQ tiles....most of the junk that needed cleaning up belonged to players that had less than 5 tiles anyway, so you destroyed any positive effect of the rent and cleanup mechanics with that one....sorry that was a terrible decision, made at the last minute). 


3. Schematics: The only reason I can think of that you now want to remove schematics is that someone did the math like I did and went 'whoa' when they saw the number for how long it would take to restart any reasonable economy or even create the capability to build most elements if everything was wiped and you had to restart the economy from scratch. With the mission nerfs you are putting in, there simply won't be enough quanta in game to finance schematic purchases to rebuild factories fast enough, at least before any new players get frustrated and bail. With the new resource distribution and lack of a 'grindable' mining mechanic elements that are now common and inexpensive would be nearly impossible to build for weeks or months, at least in any quantity. The small number of players and large orgs that might do so would effectively have a near monopoly on advanced through exotic elements (including you know warp drives and warp cells) and would get WAY richer than most are now. Sooooo, you remove schematics so more people can build by taking the brakes off, but run into the same situation pre-schematics where no one really needs to participate in an active market. 


4. Economy restart: You have backed yourself into the corner on this one with the resource distribution and auto-miners with Demeter. A number of people pointed this out in the pre-Demeter comments, but apparently you all missed that. The only change that was made was to allow the DSAT to be build with lower tier ore which makes it theoretically possible to restart the economy, just very very slow. Had you made the recipe for autominers to only rely on ore from 1 tier down from what the miner mines (that was recommended pre-Demeter) a economy bootstrap would be MUCH faster. Restarting the economy from a complete wipe will be VERY time consuming, even without schematics and any benefit you hope to gain from new players at launch is likely to evaporate quickly since there simply won't be easily available stuff. This is a hard game to master and is only viable for new players in many cases with help from existing players/orgs OR the availability of relatively cheap parts/elements on the market. Have you looked at a factory progression/restart from a complete wipe to building warp beacons? I have, I know I could do it, but I am seriously questioning why I would want to as it would be in no way fun or enjoyable, just a painful slog to get back to the bare minimums. It requires layers of bootstrapping. See item 3 on schematics....removing schematics probably puts this in the realm of weeks and that is just because of build times delaying progression and assumes ore is actually available in quantity, which i am not sure of.  However, regularly availability in the markets for anything higher than 'uncommon' elements could easily be months due to scarcity and price gouging for what is available. I would be shocked if the first warp drives that hit the market were priced under 10M each, and it stayed that way for some time. Keeping schematics puts this likely at months, if not the better part of a year unless you dropped schematic prices to almost nothing. A small number of players will be able to ramp up SOME production in either case, but there will be no common or reasonably priced availability for most elements for a LONG time. Orgs that band together will go quicker, but it will still be weeks or months before their internal needs are met.  Just building the industry units to build more industry units to build higher tier industry units will take a long time any way you cut it. The ONLY way you have left to get higher tier ore is asteroid mining, at least until there is enough availability to start putting out autominers, but even then there won't be nearly enough in operation to meet demand for weeks or months, which means huge inflation and price gouging and the same people that are currently rich getting rich again with no effective change.


Bottom line here, your tone in the devblog clearly indicated that a full wipe was the preferred decision of whomever wrote it. (Yes we have all used the 'present non-viable/flawed options first' then the preferred choice last approach to shape a decision process. Whoever wrote the post did exactly that, whether they realized it or not) but I don't think you understand how non-viable a complete wipe is given the current factory and resource mechanics.


5. Player advantage: I am going to be blunt here, in the immortal words of one of my org mates: "Did you win DU yet?". If you don't get it you don't get it, but this was supposed to be an open world sandbox game with persistent creations but it is also an MMO. People that want to acquire stuff will do so, no matter what, but most of your creative player base just wants to build stuff and have Friday night races and such. Be careful when you 'remove advantage' since the starting point with the current game is NOT anything like the starting point when Beta started. If you remove all the 'stuff' from the economy, well, see item 4 above. Bit of a potential nightmare there, probably the quickest way to kill the game for good. A lot of veteran players will feel betrayed and not come back, and the economy restart....well it might not restart, at least not the way you think it will, which will bleed off any new players quicker than you think is possible. What you should really be focusing on is enabling new players, not looking for ways to nerf existing players, or at least some balance of the two. You have a hard call here, but you seriously need to think about balancing the benefits new players get from the large number of existing players willing to help them out, because those existing players HAVE resources and the time to help and are not scrambling to build the next tier autominer against the 'level playing field' you seem to want to create where everyone is scrambling for limited resources for potentially months. Any leveling you do accomplish will be short lived at best, and I honestly don't know if it will provide some marginal benefit or kill the game within 6 months. Also, 'removing advantage' really does not work. It will only benefit a small number of large orgs that will be able to immediately pool resources and will simply dominate everything, and single players will be left worse off than before. By 'removing advantage' you run the risk of actually giving ALL the advantage to a small number of large orgs, which is probably why a good quantity of the people that advocate for a full wipe are doing so, they know that your approach to 'leveling the playing field' will give them (or their org...you know who they are) a HUGE advantage over everyone NOT part of a large org. Well, everyone else could also band together you say....but what about the new players that don't know they need to do that. There is no simple answer here, but actually zeroing out what you apparently perceive as advantages, simply gives certain player groups their own MASSIVE advantages. Bottom line, whatever you do, some people or groups will start with massive advantages, but if you get to extreme with trying to level things, you will alienate a significant portion of the dwindling hardcore player base and they will leave, while the playing field will be even less 'even' than it was before.


6. Trust: You don't have it with your existing player base. New players get:

time mark 10:34. Unfortunately, this the only 'up and coming space sim' video where I have even seen DU even mentioned, and the mention is not good in this case.  I also have a hard time disagreeing with TheYamiks on this one, as much as I would like to do so. This contributes to frustration and fatigue on your existing player base and will drive off any hope of new players. There is a strong perception that when you do listen to players it is to a very small minority of very vocal players in the official discord echo chamber. When is the last time you actually put out a player base wide survey with meaningful questions to your entire player base? (That is clearly a rhetorical question, the answer being 'never') There are the occasional pop up surveys in-game that don't really cover anything substantive, but that is really it. Example, from all prior communications, the party line has always been along the lines of, we will avoid a wipe at all costs, but if we do, veteran/beta players will keep something and I am pretty sure talent points were explicitly part of that something or at least heavily implied. Yet that was CLEARLY not my takeaway from this dev note, which dropped talent points squarely in the 'advantages we need to nerf' category. It was also pretty clearly preferring a full wipe the way the  pros/cons were shaped to make that appear the only viable solution. That is why since last week I no longer log in every single day like I did for more than a year and a half, and depending on what your decisions are here, I may not ever log in again. All my subscription(s) have now had auto-renew turned off for this simple reason, I don't trust NQ to do what they say. I am not unrecoverable as a customer, but you need to convince me it is worth my time to come back.

 

Recommendations:


1. Talent points: leave them alone or reset them into a pool that can be re-assigned, at least for paid subscriptions. Harder call on free beta keys, but at least an option to convert to a paid account is probably in order there. Will they provide an 'advantage', sure, but not that huge of one in most areas. If you are doing an economy reset, your industrial players will absolutely need every single talent point they can get if you want the economy restarted within months vice a year. The ONLY place there might be an 'advantage' issue is the PvP specific talents. Training single weapon or function talent trees for PvP functions would likely be possible before the parts become readily available to take advantage of them anyway. The large PvP orgs would likely WANT you to wipe talent points since they have a large enough player base to quickly rebuild specialized talents and will simply dominate everyone anyway within 2-4 weeks no matter what you do here. 


2. Territory/Quanta reset: Unfortunately, I think you have to do this and wipe territories and quanta. Had you NOT auto-assigned HQ tiles to effectively inactive players, or used a better approach to cleaning up dynamic constructs it might have been possible to keep territories, but NQ messed that up hard and I don't think there is any other option there. Quanta is a harder question. Due to the previous mechanics, you likely need to get most of it out of the game, BUT with the mission nerfs, if schematics are left in, there is a problem for ramping up the economy again if you don't include new quanta injection. Unless you are adding purchase bots back in to the markets for things other than tier 1 ore, capital injection into a restarting economy is going to be an issue.  I don't  know that there is a good answer there, so nuking territories and quanta from orbit is probably as viable as any other approach and I don't think there really is a 'good' solution here, only different levels of 'bad'.


3. Schematics. I think you screwed yourself and all of us on this one. With the current resource distribution and more limited quanta injection due to mission nerfing, leaving them in at anything like the current costs significantly delays any sort of economy restart. However, there is a need for a mechanic that requires capital investment in industry, otherwise there won't be an economy, and people will just build their own stuff. If you leave them in, reduce costs significantly and for gods sake just allow them to be purchased on any market, making people run around to different planets for schematics does nothing useful other than waste time and annoy people. If you remove them, the way resources are distributed now will probably provide the short term 'brakes' that limit everyone from building their own factory. That MIGHT be enough in the long term, I don't claim to know the answer there, but nuking them MIGHT be OK but I am wary of that as to simple an answer to a complex question.


4. Economy restart/peoples stuff: This one is problematic. However, there could be a partial solution. If you allow each player to bring over a limited volume of items that they select, this could mitigate somewhat the economy jumpstart issue. Allowing everyone to bring unlimited items would be terrible, but if each player can select some volume that can be retained, this possibly addresses economy restart. If each player got a 'magic container' of fixed volume or even say a Sm or XS static core they could pack to their preference this would allow a economic restart much quicker, and how 'successful' each player would be is dependent on the choices they make on what to bring. I am not sure what the correct volume would be, but probably no more than you be able to pack into a Med core WITHOUT allowing containers, or a SM or XS allowing containers. Would some players get ahead doing this, of course, that that is going to happen no matter what, and part of that would depend on how good their decision were on what to bring. Could someone pack 20 warp drives (or even 100) and get rich....maybe unless everyone else did the same thing, and lets be honest, 100 warp drives would be a drop in the bucket on what the demand would be after a reset and how rich would they get when no one had any money to start? Miners would bring autominers over, industrialists would bring industry machines over, ship parts would be available in some quantity. As long as the total volume for each account is limited, whatever comes over is it until a new industrial base is created, so some people would have an 'advantage' but a limited one at best. If you pack your volume with industry machines, you can have a factory up quicker, assuming someone else brought miners and is mining resources for you. If you pack your volume with warp drives, you get an immediate influx of cash, to the extent that people have cash to spend, but no long-term benefit after that. If someone wants to use their volume to bring over a bunch of space engine XL, great, but those take up a lot of volume, so there would simply not be a lot anyone could bring if the volume is limited so it is self-limiting based on the number of paid accounts. It will disproportionally advantage large orgs, but that is going to happen anyway with a full wipe, so this would at least allow single players or smaller orgs to avoid a from-nothing bootstrap and possibly encourage people to stay that would otherwise leave. This would introduce more diversity of products and get different sectors of the economy working faster than a one-size-fits-none standard starter pack for veteran players and would be an almost interesting mini-game in itself....kind of: :"you have to pack one bag to live on a desert isle for a year, what do you bring? Choose wisely" where any advantage that is accrued is based almost solely on peoples game play type and decisions. If you feel it is necessary to balance that for new players, give them a standard starter kit which the new FTUE is essentially doing anyway but don't give that to veteran players or make it an option for them to do one or the other. That probably levels things about as well as possible while adding enough diversity to engage different player types, restart some of the economy faster,  and retain at least some of the people that will simply not come back with a full wipe.

 

 

DU is a MMO.  You say organised orgs will habe an advantage but isn't that exactly why people have an organisation to work together in an MMO ?

 

Solo players should never be able to raise that kind of funds to be mass producing warp beacons.  Ideally yes a small core of factory but nothing like it has been.  If you want something work together to build it surely?

 

Regarding industry at the start it will be GOOD it will take significant time to rebuild it if a wipe occurs.   Exotics were achieved quickly and with missions (mass alts) even more quickly.  If we end up all flying with basics for a bit then that's OK.  Schematics were OK and having things gated were OK.

 

Regarding PVP I'm still on the opinion this wad always mentioned a building game and Civ building/PvP conquest game and a great reset will help this especially removing safe zones that should not have been turned on.

 

Lastly you make good points on talent points.

 

Honvik

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Original ideas, are not alwais good ideas , DU have unique mechanics never seen before, but alot times is better to copy existing ideas.

 

The video game industry has advanced following patterns that worked, and it is not by chance, let's say for example PvP games like Albion Online, or eve online, they are games that when you dead, part of the equipment or pieces of the ship are destroyed, it is not an arbitrary decision, it is simply a decision based on the need for wealth to disappear from the game, so that other people who do not participate in pvp can continue to produce wealth with continuous demand. 

 

Also in Albion Online and Eve Online. ,industries outside the safe zone have bonuses, which drive you to want to build and defend those unsafe zones.

 

Also both games, have pvp introductory mechanics in the safe zone like FW, militia, and wars, and pve content, to intruce people in fight mechanics.

 

Is Albion Online a Copy of eve online?

Not really, just both games evolved to the same point, risk vs reward, and wheel of creation and destruction.

 

What I have exposed are just a couple of examples of the mechanics that work in other games, and that turn out to be all very similar, because they are the ones that work, in the same way that all the wheels in are round, it is not always necessary to invent a new wheel form. 

 

Yo have the necessary tools to have a game like this, I have seen that you have the talent, but they lack the courage. Stop thinking about how things will affect your game, or the players feelings, and look at how things have gone for the brave, Albion online and eve online were brave games.

Edited by Sycopata
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The longer the post the flatter the level. Most of the last sides are only "announcements" to chancel the subscription. Thats not feedback or a discussion. It's simpel a try to blackmail NQ. If NQ ever change something on the game, i'm done. There is no try to see other perspectives or the task of NQ.  The monthly costs for a 80 man team and the server costs are enormous. From where comes the money ? Our few thousand players don't cover the costs. We and NQ needs a lot more new player and it's NQs task to reach this only goal. They enable us to be part of the way, but the last word must lie by NQ and not CHEESEWHINERXXX3. It's not a discussion about every single player history, it's a post about the big whole of DU.

 

On the other hand are half of the posts assumptions, because we are missing details for the different scenarios.

Better planets are a must have. If the attention for DU rises we see more streaming on Youttube and Twtich. The better the game looks, especially for a voxel game, the more positv reactions will there be. Means more chances for new customers.

 

Schematics were an all time hot topic. Dividing the player base. Maybe they can work like intended with the new missionsystem and a wipe of all economics. If you raise the prices explicit player are forced to work together and have a real succes of progress for every new shematic. But this is only a assumption. If NQ want skip shematics, it's ok. But it is essential to say what replace them ? Will we return in a pre schematic industry without limitations? If so we can delete all markets, because no one will need them. We will see blueprinted industry cores which build all items in the game on every tile. There will be no specialization and no cooperative/competive player interaction.

 

Talent points. I repeat the question. Hotter question than the schematics. What are the plans here ? Since beta start we collect about 80 million talent points. Are these lost or save ?

 

Roadmap/Outlook ? Some of the assumptions are only panic because nobody has a plan for the next time. Last year we had a roadmap. This year we have nothing. We know that Athena is the last content patch before 1.0 and we will see a release in the next time. But nothing else. About which time frame we discuss? If you go for wipe, when will this be ? With 1.0 or earlier ? Will we see e release more in summer or winter? What will the financing model ? Will the subscription prices remain ? In the past NQ talks of an item shop for cosmetic skins/items. How is here the stand ?

 

You see there are a lot open questions. But if NQ thinks it's good for the greater good of the game to go for a full wipe, which i support, do it. Don't let you blackmail from single players. like NQ did with the core limitations. Some times it's need drastic changes for the bigger/better whole thing, also if not every single player is happy with this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Kveen00 said:

 .. a very long post ;)

 

Pretty solid overview, The TheYamiks video I would put a sub zero value as his MO is to be negative and bash anything an everything. Yes, the M15 issue was handled badly by NQ buttey were not wrong really.

 

It seems that overall you agree with what is my position here, if NQ does a wipe they can't againdo a full wipe as that woudl destroy the value people pad mpney for which indeed is a big nono.

 

A wipe where the gameuniverse is reset/cleared, quanta and schematics are deleted and players get to keep blueprints for the constructs they are creatro for or which are DRM free.

 

Based on the NQ post I do expect they may remove schematics from the game entirely which is a shame as the idea (as with many things in NQ) is good but he implementation is not. I do think that my thoughts on how schematics woud be better iomplemented are still very valid (see HERE)

 

NQ indeed painted themselves into a corner with et choices made at bets and wil ldo so again at "release" as once they go past that point, a wipe is no longer an option while the game is effectively still very much in an alpha state and willprobably need another wipe, likely more in the years after that point, provided NQ actuallly gets to a point where they complete the core game to a level it woudl be justifyably carry a "releease" tag.

 


It is my opinion that the only way DU can really be completed to a state it deservs to be "released" would be to pull it back, the devs to hunker down and pull a NMS, but that requires both financial security and the willingness to do so which is something I believe NQ does not in either case. It feels liek they want to get it over with, sink or swim and move on. The focus for NQ is not DU, it is keeping NQ alive and DU will not be what makes that happen, something I have always believed to be the case and which only now is starting to bubble to the surface from the NQ side.

 

Mind you, that would not have to be a negative thing as when NQ could start generating revenue from other projects, like their voxel/server engine as a main asset, and continue development on DU as the showcase for that, a lot of the (financial) issues around a niche product like DU woudl go away, at leeast to some extend. A showcase product can and often will come at al oss but have those losses covered in the companies mai activity/asset.

Only time will tell, for now I have several years of free game time in DAC waiting and so I can eaily sit it out whatever happens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Sycopata said:

Original ideas, are not alwais good ideas , DU have unique mechanics never seen before, but alot times is better to copy existing ideas.

Yeas and no, I actually feel the original ideas for DU are good, if not great. it is the way these ideas took form in game and the lack of cohesion between them that is the problem. Also shoehorning something intho place where it really doe nsot fit is not good, you need to adjust and mold things to co-exist and be interdependent. And it is there where DU fails consistently

 

 

1 hour ago, Sycopata said:

Yo have the necessary tools to have a game like this, 

Not really, The core of DU is really just a box with sand, there is no dynamic or random core mechanics on which things like NPCs or interactive PVE content would be built. It's simply not there and it shows through the fact that everything NQ added that nudges in that direction is entirely static and mostly based on a UI interaction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

 

 

 

Not really, The core of DU is really just a box with sand, there is no dynamic or random core mechanics on which things like NPCs or interactive PVE content would be built. It's simply not there and it shows through the fact that everything NQ added that nudges in that direction is entirely static and mostly based on a UI interaction.

The best point on 0.23 pach:


 

[IMPORTANT] Elements now have limited restoration attempts using scrap before being permanently broken and requiring a new element to be replaced with.

 

Most elements can be restored 3 times.

Item and fuel containers can be restored 5 times.

Core Units can no longer be restored using scrap at all.

 

It was such a good aspect, that our corporation created an internal market to be able to offer spare parts, each one of the members specialized in the production of a series of spare parts, and we created an area of stores with dispensers, after reversing this patch for the pressure of the players, that industry was no longer necessary because no one needed spare parts anymore, the stores stopped making sense and the market was dead. and let's be honest, the problem is not lag or bugs, the problem is that there is a part of players, who do not want to suffer any penalty for their mistakes, and who are only interested in seeing their wealth grow.

 

The tools are in the devs hands.

 

unknown.png

Edited by Sycopata
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"It is my opinion that the only way DU can really be completed to a state it deservs to be "released" would be to pull it back, the devs to hunker down and pull a NMS, but that requires both financial security and the willingness to do so which is something I believe NQ does not in either case. It feels liek they want to get it over with, sink or swim and move on. The focus for NQ is not DU, it is keeping NQ alive and DU will not be what makes that happen, something I have always believed to be the case and which only now is starting to bubble to the surface from the NQ side."

 

You just made made me realize something:

 

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...

 

Much much easier swallow than to botch this launch because people have opinions...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

- Does a wipe also reset the achievement points, since they also unlocked points for the talents?
 

- What time frame does NQ see between release with the thought of a wipe. So, how long are players expected to hold out from "now" before things are taken away and the game is released? 

I think the longer the wait will be, the more likely players will lose interest in the game or just look for other games to tide them over, maybe even without coming back. 

Edited by Zarcata
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Overstimuloredom said:

"It is my opinion that the only way DU can really be completed to a state it deservs to be "released" would be to pull it back, the devs to hunker down and pull a NMS

I 100% agree, pulling a NMS is the only real chance DU/NQ has for a game in the long run.

 

But there is sadly one major key difference that spells doom and gloom for DU, and that is NQ and their inability to communicate and make any progress in a timely fashion. 

Hello Games on the other hand despite being a smaller team then NQ, are progressing NMS at a steady pace making timely and substantial improvements and feature additions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour 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...

 

This would make much more sense with the state the game is currently in. seeing how the game started development around the end of 2014 and opened to backers in closed Alpha September 2017 I'd say that NQ's very careful attitude and not being more forceful with the need to wipe and the need to make sweeping changes to even sometime just see how they would play out has delayed progress very much. DU is 8 years in the making and seeing the scale of the game, they are probably 2 years behind what realistically should have been possible. 

NQ has always had the illusion that what they are doing would draw in many tens of thousands, their initial pitch was actually based on "we want to not rely on investors and crowdfund to remain independent". The crowdfunding of the game really failed as the 2.2-ish million they raised that way was spent the moment it was transferred and so added nothing to their ability to develop the game.

 

I have always said, and continue to feel this way, that DU is a great idea, but NQ lacked and lacks the ability to make long term plans as well as know where to compromise early on by understanding what is achievable and what is not. By blindly chasing his dream, JC lost focus of reality and eventually lost his company and his dream. And since the shake up all NQ has been able to do is cut fat and hollow out the game to a level it remained sustainable for players. I think they have always been chasing the facts of reality and never caught up.

I wish, I really do, that NQ would be able to find a healthy chunk of money and then withdraw, pull the plans for a release and actually fix the game from the ground up, adjusting what was ignored and fixing what was dismissed. The potential for greatness is there but the incomplete foundation on which they are continuing to shoehorn in more and more top-level stuff just makes it a house of cards, which inevitably will fall over. DU is being developed not based on what's needed but on how much time NQ has before they run out of money which really is not a good place to be in.

But as it stands, the cards are on the table and it looks like NQ has decided they will make a hail Mary move in rushing to a release with the funding and resources they have, probably hoping that the many tens of thousands they need will still come.

 

 

  

9 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

But there is sadly one major key difference that spells doom and gloom for DU, and that is NQ and their inability to communicate and make any progress in a timely fashion. 

 

Hello Games on the other hand despite being a smaller team then NQ, are progressing NMS at a steady pace making timely and substantial improvements and feature additions.

 

NMS has become a pretty string game, obviously Hello gamees has a healthy bank account and also a revenue stream form other titles. The reasons why NMS borked at launch also werenot a bad foundation for the game but a published (Sony) pushing  the release whil ethe game wasnot ready for it. So Hello games both had the funding an dthe talent to hunker down, ignore the bad press and get to work.

NQ is a very top heavy company where the actual team working  the game is a fairly small part of the game. Too many in middel/upper management, directors, "senior" this or that, "so and so lead" .. 

I have no doubt the devs at NQ do what they can with te tools they have but the interests and agendas of the levels above them I can see hinder that effort more than aiding it.

If NQ would push the actual development of DU to Montreal and focus Paris on theyr "new ploject", that might actually be a good start but I think they are too late to right the ship and will just run into the wall that is their (no doubt allready set as a fixed point) release date fo rthe game. DU will realease not ready but in the state it is in at that time with whatever not being complete pushed out beyond that point..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

But as it stands, the cards are on the table and it looks like NQ has decided they will make a hail Mary move in rushing to a release with the funding and resources they have, probably hoping that the many tens of thousands they need will still

 

That would only happen if NQ went from advertising and sales pitches to showering new players with honesty.
If I imagine I come to the website as an interested new player:
https://www.dualuniverse.game/ or this here: https://www.novaquark.com/homepage
and look around there, pictures, texts, videos and then start playing, I will probably just leave the game disappointed within a month. (Unless I'm a mega-fan or can't find anything else interesting on the gigantic games market).
If a new player then read through the Discord or the forum, ....

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?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to be exact cpnlores, that quote was from blazemonger but when I do real quotes text editing goes haywire on my phone.

 

 

TBF hellogames had a few hard lessons to learn too, but they handled it commendably.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  

2 minutes 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.

 

Neither is NQ.. and that is a problem (if not THE problem) as they simply can't cater to everyone.

 

2 minutes ago, Overstimuloredom said:

TBF hellogames had a few hard lessons to learn too, but they handled it commendably.

There is an excellent viseo on this on YT (HERE)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Aleksandr said:

 

 

180 euro = main + 3 beta accounts

80 accounts = 3600 euro

 

 

The people with 80 accounts definitely didn't pay 3600 Euros for them, although at some point someone did.

 

What has happened is that a lot of people have left the game over time and given their accounts to other people when they did so.  Some people have collected a lot of accounts in this way so, although they weren't free to begin with, they were free to the person who is currently using them.

 

Of course there are also people who paid a lot of money for a lot of accounts and also people who paid for the accounts they got from others in other ways, I don't want to knock anyone's hard work or contributions.  Just that there are people who have a lot of accounts and at least some of those are ones they got for free.

 

Also I think each account got an extra free beta key at some point and you could go '60E for 1 main + 2 beta', so 'only' 1,600E for 80 accounts.  I think a lot of many-multiboxers have more like 20-30 each so it is believable that those were bought for hundreds of Euros.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

The people with 80 accounts definitely didn't pay 3600 Euros for them, although at some point someone did.

 

What has happened is that a lot of people have left the game over time and given their accounts to other people when they did so.  Some people have collected a lot of accounts in this way so, although they weren't free to begin with, they were free to the person who is currently using them.

 

Of course there are also people who paid a lot of money for a lot of accounts and also people who paid for the accounts they got from others in other ways, I don't want to knock anyone's hard work or contributions.  Just that there are people who have a lot of accounts and at least some of those are ones they got for free.

 

Also I think each account got an extra free beta key at some point and you could go '60E for 1 main + 2 beta', so 'only' 1,600E for 80 accounts.  I think a lot of many-multiboxers have more like 20-30 each so it is believable that those were bought for hundreds of Euros.

 

I slightly disagree.

1st: Using other players main account is against EULA

 

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

Quote

Also I think each account got an extra free beta key at some point and you could go '60E for 1 main + 2 beta',

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.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...