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This feels like another wipe thread. Odd that NQ locks all other threads about wipes and ask we use the 40 page one until this new one NQ created emerged. I would rather see the 80 page thread over a two forty page ones but what do I know...

 

All I do know is all these reasons for a wipe assume exploits will never again occur, players will never join the game after release, and there will never be another change that will make us have to redo ships. If all of that is true wipe. If not wiping is just filling in a hole in the ground with one shovel while digging it deeper with another. 

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3 hours ago, blundertwink said:

This whole thing goes to show how unprepared they are for release.

 

This is nothing new, and is how NQ has been operating for years (I would estimate it started when their first and overly optimists release date in late 2018 was blown). And this behavior has already been blowing up in their faces multiple times with players in a uproar and leaving over it.

 

And the really, really bad and scary thing is that NQ has not learned a single thing from past mistakes and are still behaving in the exact same way even as they get closer and closer to a full 'release'.

 

And we have long since reach a point where NQ has nobody but themself to blame. Since this is no longer about lack of money or time (of which they have had plenty) but instead about consistent and atrociously bad planning and behavior from NQ towards the community, with only sporadic and symbolic "we hear you" attempts at improving that quickly fall to the wayside.

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On 5/7/2022 at 10:58 AM, Niemand said:

its not about a difficult decision. the fact is you have minimal chance of success whatever decision you make. why is that? the western economy is collapsing(by design) as we speak and no thats not putins fault.

 

here is what i think

-very bad time for a subscription based niche game while (almost)everybody is getting poor.

-you designed this niche game to be a massive multiplayer game. means you need alot more players and you wont get them without free2play or atleast a onetime purchase (no sub)

-you listen to a few old babys who cry everyday about a wipe and losing their talent points. these people think they are somehow important because the are here since alpha. you know it better than me, those people are a tiny minority and they are not important at all. give them some kind of unique skin or whatever and thank them for testing your game. thats all they deserve.

-your game is far from being finished, all you can do right now is going into steam early access to get a new wave of players and ofc to get some money. i say wipe and then wipe again at the end of early access. after early access, official full release and never wipe again.

-here are some positive news: your game looks good compared to star citizen, i mean SC is probably the biggest joke/scam in gaming history but hey atleast chris roberts is rich and happy. elite dangerous community is also not happy. starbase had a pretty bad start and lost lots of players.

-your game is the pretty good from a technology standpoint. the combination of building, flying, physics and details like heat and aerodynamics is the best on the market if you ask me. (ok kerbal space program is better but its singleplayer focus). performance is an issue, everybody knows that

-planets need improvement. planets/moons like sancturary and alioth look dead and boring. the starting planet needs to be awesome to impress new players from the beginning.

-space is empty and boring. i know thats realistic but this game is not about realism. freelancer had the best spacemap: nebulas, nebulas with storms, radioactive clouds/nebulas, nebulas that effect your sensor/radar/shiphull.  lots of hidden bases and trading stations, lots of hidden treasure like unique weapons. jumpholes, npc ships and so much more.

-most "gamers" dont even know that dual universe exists. your small youtube channel is def not enough to spread the word.

 

I can agree with some of your points. To some others I have a different opinion. But there is one thing I cannot leave uncommented:

 

NQ does owe the early players/backers something. Did you check the price that they payed? We're talking about several hundred Euros. Wtf a skin... U mad bro?

 

Even if they are few compared to the number of players that NQ hopes to achieve... Nobody of them will speak positively about the game ever again.

 

Gamers that are dedicated enough to spend thousands of hours in an unknown game during alpha and beta - even spending hundreds of Euros for it - are usually well connected with their other gamer friends to share their experiences with. Some of the players even have youtube and twitch channels.

(I'm just a gaming grandpa, but even I'm part of a smal gaming-community that I test this game for and report my achievements and experiences to, hoping they follow me after release.)

 

You're right, in the grand scheme of things, the few dozen or few hundred people don't count at all. But they can and will give NQ a bad name if they aren't now treated with the respect they deserve as customers of NQ. We're not first graders who get the wrong change from the baker for their sandwiches!

 

The people who are unhappy with the way this thing is being handled are not crybabies. They have good and hard to refute arguments why you shouldn't invest money and time into this game. They can therefore give DU an even harder start than the game will have anyway, since subscription-based games aren't exactly popular these days anyway.

 

Btw, there are a lot of players who still don't know anything about this and about a 40-page discussion thread. (I know it, because they buy soon to be useless things like schematics from me.) They will be caught unprepared and they will most likely not be happy either.

 

So imho. NQ just doesn't want a PR disaster. And that's the only thing that gives NQ a headache.

 

 

 

Disclaimer @NQ:

This is not to be taken as a threat. It's just my point of view with over 30 years of gaming experience under my belt.

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31 minutes ago, Neryman said:

NQ does owe the early players/backers something. Did you check the price that they payed? We're talking about several hundred Euros. Wtf a skin... U mad bro?

$500 here, though I don't feel like I am owed anything other than what was listed in the pledge description and only if it made it to release, I knew it was a gamble and basically a donation. My expectations were very conservative because it didn't blow up like Star Citizen, they had meager funding to work with for an mmo. If another developer can do it better down the line I'll happily jump on that, but I'm kinda done with alphas and betas.

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On 5/7/2022 at 4:58 PM, Niemand said:

its not about a difficult decision. the fact is you have minimal chance of success whatever decision you make. why is that? the western economy is collapsing(by design) as we speak and no thats not putins fault.

 

here is what i think

-very bad time for a subscription based niche game while (almost)everybody is getting poor.

-you designed this niche game to be a massive multiplayer game. means you need alot more players and you wont get them without free2play or atleast a onetime purchase (no sub)

-you listen to a few old babys who cry everyday about a wipe and losing their talent points. these people think they are somehow important because the are here since alpha. you know it better than me, those people are a tiny minority and they are not important at all. give them some kind of unique skin or whatever and thank them for testing your game. thats all they deserve.

-your game is far from being finished, all you can do right now is going into steam early access to get a new wave of players and ofc to get some money. i say wipe and then wipe again at the end of early access. after early access, official full release and never wipe again.

-here are some positive news: your game looks good compared to star citizen, i mean SC is probably the biggest joke/scam in gaming history but hey atleast chris roberts is rich and happy. elite dangerous community is also not happy. starbase had a pretty bad start and lost lots of players.

-your game is the pretty good from a technology standpoint. the combination of building, flying, physics and details like heat and aerodynamics is the best on the market if you ask me. (ok kerbal space program is better but its singleplayer focus). performance is an issue, everybody knows that

-planets need improvement. planets/moons like sancturary and alioth look dead and boring. the starting planet needs to be awesome to impress new players from the beginning.

-space is empty and boring. i know thats realistic but this game is not about realism. freelancer had the best spacemap: nebulas, nebulas with storms, radioactive clouds/nebulas, nebulas that effect your sensor/radar/shiphull.  lots of hidden bases and trading stations, lots of hidden treasure like unique weapons. jumpholes, npc ships and so much more.

-most "gamers" dont even know that dual universe exists. your small youtube channel is def not enough to spread the word.

 

Anyone is free to have their own thoughts about a game.  But I don't quite agree for the point u mentioned of StarCitizen is the biggest scam.  I spent nearly $2000 USD for these few years and still happy with each patches the dev bringing in, new ships, new features, new bugs lol, new gameplay and experiences.  Have u ever play the game for more than 3 hours? It's a metaverse like pilot simulation game.  Maybe u don't really like it but it's definitely not a scam with those deliveries and new game play. They are fixing the Gen12 graphic engine and Vulkan is coming soon.  My computer runs SC at 60fps quite stable right now, and there is a free week coming on May20.  U can have a try before spreading false message: it's totally a scam. (NOT)

 

And paid few hundreds Euro and get a skin only as return for a minority group  like me, it's truly a scam to me if this is real from DU.  But anyway, I don't really care, just abandon the game if they treat early support like this.  At least I have played the game since Alpha, a skin or nothing is no longer important to me.  And, DU is actually dying from what I observe, maybe they just wanna save themselves.

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A bit of background about my crowdfunding "addiction".  You don't need to read it.

Spoiler

Before Corona turned everything topsy turvy, I used to be a Crowdfunding whore putting it out there (money, what were you thinking?) for all sorts of things. I've put tens of thousands into Kickstarter, Indiegogo and private funds. VR headsets, Carbon Fibre and Fat Tyre Electric Bicycles, Damascus Steel kitchen knives, Pocket computers and... GAMES...  Including, Bard's Tale, SC, ED, Hellion and DU. I've been incredibly lucky overall so far. During that time, I pulled out of several kickstarters during the refund period only to watch them collapse or be labelled scams.

And of the 20+k$ I've funded, only Hellion (which I paid $10 for an alpha or something) has fallen through so far, taking my "investment" with it.

 

I prepurchased Cities Skylines and NMS, and both of those tuned out into absolute bangers!

 

I've put several K into Star Citizen, and that finally seems to be bearing fruit at long last and is looking incredible. Also, the depth of each system introduced so far: Flight mechanics, combat, mining, cargo handling is INSANE.
And I've put almost 1000 into Elite Dangerous over the years, too although I regret my continued support for that game as, since Odyssey came out it's been an unmitigated fustercluck.

 

So now I'm watching DU with interest (rather than playing all that much right now)... 


... and I've put well over $300 into this game for kickstarter and alpha accounts but I don't regret a single penny. I feel that even if the game died today, it was worth the thousand+ hours of fun and despite the griping on here, the community is incredibly strong and still largely positive (although in clearly dwindling numbers) and I will be keeping many of the friends I made over the last four years.

We can only hope that NQ can manage a Hello Games style renaissance at some point, but indicators are not looking good right now.

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3 hours ago, Jinxed said:

We can only hope that NQ can manage a Hello Games style renaissance at some point, but indicators are not looking good right now.


Well, Hello Games created insane amounts of hype through social media and interviews which fell flat drastically upon launch of No Man's Sky. Despite that, they still made lots of cash from pre-orders and all the shabang even if MANY, MANY people refunded. It gave the studio a cushion of funds upon which they could sit to rework their game and actually make it something resembling a functioning game to the decent game it is now, with people warming up again to it after it could only have gotten better with the state it was in at launch.

DU does not have that kinda hype, not that kinda cushion. I predict the launch will see an increase in player numbers compared to now, but that wouldn't be hard to achieve. But generally it wont be that many new players that will also stick (especially since it's a sub-based MMO compared to buy once, play forever). A sub-fee alone deters players. Best case, just like EVE, it will have a dedicated, but in the grand scheme of MMOs, small playerbase that will be enough to keep it running, with occasional updates but nothing that will ever lift it into such numbers that it would fund any drastic overhauls or reworks.

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1 hour ago, Metsys said:

Well, Hello Games created insane amounts of hype through social media and interviews which fell flat drastically upon launch of No Man's Sky. Despite that, they still made lots of cash from pre-orders and all the shabang even if MANY, MANY people refunded.

 

Plus it was developed by a team of <20 people over only 3 years...NQ's team is over twice the size and has taken 2-3 times as long. 

 

For NMS, they had to create their own engine -- that alone is no small feat. The procgen algorithms in NMS are just as complex as any of the mechanics in DU if not more so. Although NMS isn't an MMO, it's not that hard to run into a dozen or so players in any hub. 

 

I think DU would have been better off as an asynchronous multiplayer game similar to NMS.

 

That would align with their budget more closely and allow them the time and resources needed to make NPCs to fill out their world, add feature depth, and let players have more agency in the game experience. 

 

A lot (arguably most) of the complexity with DU comes from the scale and optimizations needed to work as an MMO. Player interaction isn't really much of a thing anyway, so asynchronous multiplayer in a similar style to NMS would work fairly well.

 

You'd still be able to showcase your creations and meet players in key hubs/markets -- but the game would be vastly easier to develop, which means by now it'd have a lot more depth. 

 

Of course...they wouldn't be able to charge a subscription, which means they likely wouldn't have received all that VC money to begin with. 

 

This is a big tangent to the topic but there's already like 1000 replies talking about a wipe beyond the 3 billion threads that have discussed it in the past, so not really too concerned... 

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On 5/11/2022 at 8:23 AM, Haunty said:

If they choose not to decide, they still have made a choice

I can’t believe NQ is this indecisive. I think they are only delaying the announcement.

 

I will also say the delay announcing is terrible.

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2 hours ago, Doombad said:

I can’t believe NQ is this indecisive. I think they are only delaying the announcement.

 

I will also say the delay announcing is terrible.

Yes, it's fairly obvious there will be a wipe now and if it was me I'd want to make the announcement as far away from the actual release as possible.  I can see why it would be tempting to delay it so people keep playing and don't cancel their subs, but on release they will be relying on the existing community to welcome the new players who come and provide a fun environment for them to play in.

 

If they announce the wipe right before the release everyone will see that for what it is, because we aren't stupid, and people will be annoyed about being strung along and milked for extra subs.  Others will also be annoyed anyway because a wipe will upset a lot of people wo don't want one.

 

If it was me I wouldn't want to market and launch a game only to have players turn up and find a bunch of angry players raging about how bad NQ are and not playing.

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44 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Yes, it's fairly obvious there will be a wipe now and if it was me I'd want to make the announcement as far away from the actual release as possible.  I can see why it would be tempting to delay it so people keep playing and don't cancel their subs, but on release they will be relying on the existing community to welcome the new players who come and provide a fun environment for them to play in.

 

Plus...release will certainly crash and burn if it isn't tested...and right now it isn't being tested. 

 

If you don't test the latest changes before release, there's no point to having a beta program at all -- it renders the last year of testing basically worthless. 

 

I wonder if there's anyone in charge over there or if it's just people collecting their checks until it implodes. I know that is probably too harsh, but I don't really get how the project could get this far off the rails unless morale there is utterly depleted, even at the leadership level. 

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On 5/5/2022 at 9:06 PM, NQ-Nyota said:

We know that you have many questions about many Dual Universe topics on your mind. Next week, we will be starting a new podcast where we will be bringing your questions to our Novaquark team for answers. 

It is now Friday of "next week", where is the pod cast? Looking forward to hearing all about the decision on the wipe!

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On 5/5/2022 at 9:06 PM, NQ-Nyota said:

Next week, we will be starting a new podcast where we will be bringing your questions to our Novaquark team for answers. 

 today?

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Figure after endless anti-wipe comments I would practice empathy and try to see why we should wipe. I honestly think the below are valid reasons (like them or not) to wipe. The other stuff I have seen are not great reasons. The truth can help people, telling them stuff that lacks common sense like saying a bunch of stuff that will repeat wipe or not is problematic at best. 
 

Why Wipe:
-To slow the game down. We were in beta and the game had to be paced quicker to allow us to test end game aspects that could not have been achieved or tested in the needed detail if the game was paced as indented. 

-Protect DAC as once that is in the game the game's economy has real world value. This makes many people abuse exploits in greater numbers while also incentivizing them to never say anything about them. 

If these are valid reasons tell us and tell us what or how your protecting or changing things to support these. If these are not the reasons and they are what was said thus far please, please help us understand how a wipe is not kicking the can. Exploits will emerge and wiping the game after release should not be a option... Unless that is option and the answer when exploits emerge post release... is to wipe and wipe again 

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17 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

Plus...release will certainly crash and burn if it isn't tested...and right now it isn't being tested. 

 

If you don't test the latest changes before release, there's no point to having a beta program at all -- it renders the last year of testing basically worthless. 

 

 

I think what is live on the main server now is essentially the game as it will be at release.  So to that extent is is being tested by whoever is still playing.  NQ have said that it we have had the last big update and only small changes will go in between now and release.  Perhaps DAC still needs to be done (we're waiting on the announcement) but that's not something to be tested anyway - you have to get DAC right first time.

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17 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

I think what is live on the main server now is essentially the game as it will be at release.  So to that extent is is being tested by whoever is still playing.

 

Tested at minuscule scale is not good enough, IMO -- even if they went back in time and didn't bungle this wipe announcement, the beta population then still wouldn't be enough to test the game at scale for release....but it would have been a lot better. 

 

I expect NQ is thinking along the lines of "who care if most people stopped playing, we are still getting test data and bug reports?" -- but that's just not going to work.

 

They learned (hah, they didn't) from public beta's launch that things working at a small scale doesn't mean they'll work at a release scale -- anyone that's seen software break at scale knows it is a lot more involved than tripling the hardware to triple the traffic. 

 

A single tiny flaw that isn't noticed when there's only a few hundred people beta testing will explode the servers if thousands join on release day...and with the amount of tech debt NQ has accumulated, they will need many months to optimize and fix things. 

 

I do think they'll announce this before release and will try to release during winter, but every day with low populations is wasted time in gathering the data they need to scale this bastard. 

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First off,

1.    this statement from SHEDDING LIGHT ON A NOVAQUARK INTERNAL DISCUSSION doesn't make sense

·    

Quote
  • As you, our current experienced players, will have quite an advantage compared to the new players on many levels (game knowledge, talent points, wealth, constructs already owned), there's a need to make things a bit more balanced to give a fighting chance to the wave of new players that will join the Community later.

With that logic, you as in NQ would have to wipe the servers with every wave of new players to keep DU balanced. Players that have been on DU for more than a day will always have more game knowledge, talent points, wealth, constructs already owned then a player that starts the day before. This will never change and can’t be changed    

 

2.    NQ has always talked about having a bigger universe. Why not with the current solar system, bring planets a little closer together, make it a PVE\starter solar system. Create a copy\new system and\or systems that are PVP only. Everyone then has a place.

 

3.    I am ok with a game wipe if it fixes issue and we can keep our talent points, blueprints and possible our money. Talent point have taken along time to accumulate since its was implemented, and some of our BP have taken days\months to create. If that get wiped the last 4 years playing this game would of been for nothing.

 

 

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On 5/11/2022 at 8:41 PM, Neryman said:

NQ does owe the early players/backers something. Did you check the price that they payed? We're talking about several hundred Euros. Wtf a skin... U mad bro?

 

The pledge made is represented in the DAC that will be issued at release which will give you X months of playtime. The pledge is effectively a pre order of game time. The experience gained prior to release is really also a bonus that can't be talken away and that includes the blueprints you might collect and retain across a wipe.

So no, NQ doe snot "owe" backers beyond delivering the game, the perks and DAC. Anything else is just extra.

My main account has a Sapphire pledge, I paid €240 for 50 DAC and have had access to the game for nearly 5 years now...  I'd say that is a pretty good deal.. and even if the game completely bombs after release, my €240 have given me more than a good share of hours in game.

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What NQ owes us is a roadmap and a decision on the fundamental question of whether the persistent universe we play in started 2 years ago or has not started yet.  All other decisions should stem from that rather than compete with it.

 

How about we stop talking about anything else except 'when will NQ get their **** together and tell us if they are or are not going to wipe'.  Then after that discussions like 'I paid for $XXX of DAC' would have a lot more meaning and substance.

 

Lets make every. single. thread. on the forum about 'when will you get your **** together and tell us about the wipe' and make it so every single post is about that and nothing else.

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