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The "release" of DU is fast approaching (I give up edition ;) )


blazemonger

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[EDIT]

With NQ publishing their first actual blogpost around release (the DAC post fournd HERE), it seems my initial timeline is actually off by several weeks. I have now edited the original post to reflect my updated expectations. BAsically, everything is pushed forward by 2 weeks

 

{EDIT 2}

With the Creative Director post it looks like NQ is actually starting their ramp up to a release. And with it, it feels like we're back on track for September 1st.

 

[EDIT 3]

And so it took NQ only 6 weeks to backpaddle on their "this is the last major update before release" statement, obviously and conveniently ignoreing they ever said as much.

 

Assuming they follow their normal pattern, Mercury will be pushed end of this month, which in turn pushed out the next update, whatever that may be, to probably October but it's too short for them to do a  wipe and set up the headstart which I absolutely expect to come.

 

So I guess we're back to end of the year again for release, something which was the original expectation prior to the Athena announcment and the mention that Athena was the last major patch. NQ will probably try and spin it as Mercury not being a major patch whcih obviously is nonsense. But anyway.. 

 

You can't build reasonable expectations based off of an unreliable and indecisive studio so I'll take my loss on this one

 


And here is what I expect (speculation may occur):

 

[Fact] 18 May sees the publication of a blogpost around how DAC is going to be implemented inititally. As DAC activation is directly linked to release of the game, combined with how NQ has _always_ started their cycle of devblogs before a next major patch, Release is not far away. It is actually much closer than thought.
 

[Fact] 8 June sees the Creative director post. Pretty much rehashing all the features that initially were supposed to be in game at release but since were pushed back to post release. big absentees are AvA and player markets. only the fleets thing seems new. The comments about release seem to set this event up with the expected "2 years of intense beta testing" spin and unfotunately NQ still holding back on telling us they will wipe.

 

week 13-17 June will see the first actual devblog on the release, it will discuss what in anything will be added prior to release.

week 20-24 June, a second blogpost will go into some of the last additions before releease in more detail.

week 27  June - 1 July, a third devblog, this time with mention that a decidion on the wipe is "almost finalised" and NQ hopes to share more soon (TM).

4-8 July, a final devblog. NQ has made up their mind and a partial wipe will occur where details will follow (NQ will milk this thing to the very end). Also, first release PTS session announced

 

PTS with "release candidate 1" patch 8-11 July

PTS with "release candidate 2" patch 15-18 July

 

week 18-22 July, the "wipe" and release devblog ..

 

Release patch will be brought to "live" server 16st August

  • Everything wil lbe reset
  • Talent points accrued are returnerd to the pool
  • Constructs you are the creator for or which are DRM free are delivered to your backpack
  • Beta keys will deactivate
  • An offer will be made for beta key holders to join the "head start" by buying a sub for 6 months at around $45

 

Official "release" date wil be 1 September, DAC will be activated from that date. New subs will be charged $15/month while existing active subs will remain at $10/month (for at least a year)
And a media blitz starts .. inviting people to join the headstart by taking a 12 month sub at the special introductory offer of $99 (normally $120)


PTS with "gold release candidate" and wipe patch 29 July - 8 August (could be just a weekend though)

 

15 August - Live server offline for wipe and patch. DAC webpages go live
16 August - Headstart period begins
..then..

1 September 2022 - DU day (release)

 

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NQ will not get away with what effectively is a full wipe. Besides them having clearly stated a full wipe would only happen again if really required (which doe not apply here), Talent points directly represent the gametime paid for and thus removing them would be "taking the money and run" for the beta period and it would absolutely and justifiably cause a riot. Also, a full wipe will probably see a far wider fallout as in existing players not returning and potentially advocating against joining the game when asked.

 

A reset of the game world and removal of Quanta I would not see a problem with as the level of knowledge and experience will allow existing players to get back in quickly. Removing talents and returning the point s to your pool for respec (which is another major advantage existing players will retain) is really the only option NQ has outside of not doing a wipe.

 

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Letting people keep talent points would put off a lot of potential converts from eve, as they will perceive it as too big a head start (as that’s an issue with the way eve is setup).


I’m assuming whatever NQ does will be purely driven by keeping the game alive, which is all any of us should care about.

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Only if they really do not understand how the skill system in EVE works. NQ pretty much copied it's structure.

 

I've explained this several times so not going to again but bottom line is that a new player will get to 80% of what a 2 year old character has trained in about 5.5 months and wil continue to catchup after that. Try HERE to get a basic idea..

Also, EVE is "worse" (not really though) because it gates abilities/access to ships and modules behind skills. in Du they are more of a buff.
 

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14 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

Only if they really do not understand how the skill system in EVE works. NQ pretty much copied it's structure.

 

I've explained this several times so not going to again but bottom line is that a new player will get to 80% of what a 2 year old character has trained in about 5.5 months and wil continue to catchup after that. Try HERE to get a basic idea..

Also, EVE is "worse" (not really though) because it gates abilities/access to ships and modules behind skills. in Du they are more of a buff.
 

I agree, but it’s perception that matters, not reality.

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While I agree, NQ could communicate this openly and directly, lay down the facts and debunk the perception. NQ actually has an open chance here to use this to their advantage but I expect they won't as they do not see it. 

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4 hours ago, blazemonger said:

Only if they really do not understand how the skill system in EVE works. NQ pretty much copied it's structure.

 

I've explained this several times so not going to again but bottom line is that a new player will get to 80% of what a 2 year old character has trained in about 5.5 months and wil continue to catchup after that. Try HERE to get a basic idea..

Also, EVE is "worse" (not really though) because it gates abilities/access to ships and modules behind skills. in Du they are more of a buff.
 

 

People who *really* understand how the eve skill system works will disagree with you here.  The thing most people don't get is that the skills in eve multiply out.  So you have, say, a 5% damage skill, but then also a 5% tracking skill, a 5% falloff skill and a 5% rate of fire skill.  If you get them all you do 5% more damage 5% more quickly, hit 5% more often and do extra damage through falloff or can hit further away.  Also you get multiple skills which hit the same attribute and those stack, so if you have 50% from one skill and 100% from the other you get an extra 50% from having both.  Put them all together and the difference between all 4 and all 5 is a lot bigger than you think it's going to be.  In eve it's big enough that without having most of the relevant skills at 5 you can't really successfully 1v1 against properly trained pilots and you really need about 6 months of training to be properly effective.  Even in fleet fights the setups are usually optimised so much that the ships don't really work properly unless most of your skills are at 5 (even though the 'gate' is level 1).

 

But DU is a bit different because you have build and operational skills and so long as you can get ship boosts from a maxed out player you're halfway there.  And that means that if there's a wipe without a talent reset those experienced players will be 100% necessary to do PvP for the first 3 months.  So it won't be possible to make a new player org and compete, you'll have to go to one of the existing groups. 

I agree that a new player can catch up a lot of the way in a few months with some dedicated training (existing players will have a lot of different ship sizes/weapons trained) but that might not matter.  If a new player *thinks* they can't catch up a lot will quit.  The first thing a new player will realise is that they can't sensibly manufacture anything at all and sell it without making a loss until they get about 20 of the tier 1 manufacturing skills to 4.  And that's just the tier 1 skills.  They'll be competing against players with 60+ skills at 4 minimum, many at 5, and will get priced out of the market right away.  Are those people just going to train skills for months and wait patiently to get into manufacturing (while not training anything else)?  Or are they just going to conclude that this is a part of the game that only the beta players can touch?

 

If it's going to be a wipe then, IMO, it has to be a at least a partial talent point wipe too.  The way I'd do it is to let everyone keep 5 million talent points and 1/4 of whatever they had above that.  So the oldest beta player is 6 months ahead of a new player at the start of release.

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This is not about the effect of a skill, it is about the time it takes to train it. And that is exactly the same between DU and EVE in that the way it is designed will allow a new player to get up to 80% of the same skills is considerable less time than what a more tenured player "is ahead" since that new player will train several talents to L4 in the same time a tenured player trains a single L5 of one skill by that time.  All talents, like skills ins EVE, have a 80-20-20-80 sctructure which means that you train 4 levels in 20% of the time it takes to train the full talent and the 5th level takes 80% of that time. So effectively, "catching up" is really not a concern at all.
 
But we're getting off topic here.. 

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Sorry blaze, NQ isn't capable of being organized enough to actually follow the plan you have laid out. It is 50/50 we will see Starfield (which has been delayed) released before we get an answer on wipe.

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Unless a miracle happens and NQ finds many millions in funding to not be forced to, DU will release this year in whatever state it is.


Once past release, a wipe in any form is really no longer an option. I originally expected DU woudl get to "release" end of the year but I expect Nq won't be able to stretch thei budget that far. We'll see..

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9 hours ago, blazemonger said:

Unless a miracle happens and NQ finds many millions in funding to not be forced to, DU will release this year in whatever state it is.


Once past release, a wipe in any form is really no longer an option. I originally expected DU woudl get to "release" end of the year but I expect Nq won't be able to stretch thei budget that far. We'll see..

 

Hehe not unless Mr. Andurand decides to burn thru few more of those fancy millions he earned by hustling russian hydrocarbons

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22 hours ago, Shredder said:

Letting people keep talent points would put off a lot of potential converts from eve, as they will perceive it as too big a head start (as that’s an issue with the way eve is setup).


I’m assuming whatever NQ does will be purely driven by keeping the game alive, which is all any of us should care about.

 If there's anyone who understands time gated progress, it's EVE players. Unless the player hopped on the eve train in 2003, there's 10's  of thosaunds of pilots that are millions upon millions skillpoints ahead of the newbs.  Like Blaze mentioned, EVE is much stricter in time limited progress barriers. In DU you can have decent enough skill to operate any equipment within weeks.  In EVE you become a very formidable frig/interceptor pilot in couple of weeks, But moving up to something like cruisers/heavy assault cruisers takes months and and to make full use of battleship doesn't happen before 6 months,  and dreadnaught classes take year+ to fly and a lot more to fly well. And we're not even talking training needed utility skills to actually make use of those gun platforms. 

 

In MMO live service space, you're always behind someone and it's a gap you cannot erase, and that's perfectly fine, as long as there is a niche into which new players can squeeze.  A good example of that in eve is small gangs.  A well organized gang of 2-3 players ( with as little as 4 weeks worth of skillpoints)  can easily blow up a 60mil sp BS pilot ( and they do|.  There's always more than one way  to skin a cat.  If you can't win a fist fight, you bring a baseball next time :)

 

When you're building a MMO game, cornerstone of which is persistence, you must reward players the payers with the most commitment most, and players with least commitment the least. Of course there are genres where this is not the case, lobby shooters being the prime example of that. But that a completely different design paradigm.

 

As for the mythical EVE converts, i hate break it to you, but the lion's share of possible eve converts already tried DU in alpha/alph-beta and very few of them still actively play.  I myself come for EVE background, and i was enamorated with pitch of EVEish dog eat dog world with creative side to it where i can become my own shipwright. Alas besides the shipwright part, rest of ( what little there is besides building) DU did not really knock my socks off. 

 

I've accepted that NQ decided to wipe (whatever form) . Few weeks prior to this whole drama i  finally reached the point in my progression where i could support my piloting/building/shopping habits without having to grind for resources.  However the journey there wasn't particulary entertaining. certainly not enough to be willing to repeat the experience of past 2 years. I'm convinced i'm not alone in this feeling,

 

The biggest problem of DU is not the wipe itself, but the fact that such a large part of its playerbase did not enjoy the experience enough to be willing to repeat it.  In a lot of other MMOs people like to start new avatars for the sole purpose of reliving the starting experience ( even  in EVE).  Don't see that in DU.

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  • blazemonger changed the title to The "release" of DU is fast approaching (revised)
  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/15/2022 at 5:32 AM, blazemonger said:

Release patch will be brought to "live" server 1st August

  • Everything wil lbe reset
  • Talent points accrued are returnerd to the pool
  • Constructs you are the creator for or which are DRM free are delivered to your backpack
  • Beta keys will deactivate
  • An offer will be made for beta key holders to join the "head start" by buying a sub for 6 months at around $45

 

Official "release" date wil be 15 August, DAC will be activated from that date. New subs will be charged $15/month while existing active subs will remain at $10/month (for at least a year)
And a media blitz starts .. inviting people to join the headstart by taking a 12 month sub at the special introductory offer of $99 (normally $120)


PTS with "gold release candidate" and wipe patch 22-25 July

 

01 August - Live server offline for wipe and patch. DAC webpages go live
02 Augusty - Headstart period begins
..then..

15th August 2022 - DU day (release)

 

 

I would be ok with this as a "roadmap", but they would actually need to say it, then somewhat stick to it.

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On 5/15/2022 at 8:32 PM, blazemonger said:

[EDIT]

With NQ publishing their first actual blogpost around release (the DAC post fournd HERE), it seems my initial timeline is actually off by several weeks. I have now edited the original post to reflect my updated expectations. BAsically, everything is pushed forward by 2 weeks

And here is what I expect (speculation may occur):

 

[Fact] 18 May sees the publication of a blogpost around how DAC is going to be implemented inititally. As DAC activation is directly linked to release of the game, combined with how NQ has _always_ started their cycle of devblogs before a next major patch, Release is not far away. It is actually much closer than thought.
 

week 30 May - 3 June will see the first actual devblog on the release, it will discuss what will be added prior to release.

week 6 -10 June, a second blogpost will go into some of the last additions before releease.

week 13 - 17June, a third devblog, this time with mention that a decidion on the wipe is "almost finalised" and NQ hopes to share more soon (TM).

27 June - 1 July, a final devblog. NQ has made up their mind and a partial wipe will occur where details will follow (NQ will milk this thing to the very end).

 

PTS with "release candidate 1" patch 1-4 July

PTS with "release candidate 2" patch 8-15 July

 

week 18-22 July, the "wipe" and release devblog ..

 

Release patch will be brought to "live" server 1st August

  • Everything wil lbe reset
  • Talent points accrued are returnerd to the pool
  • Constructs you are the creator for or which are DRM free are delivered to your backpack
  • Beta keys will deactivate
  • An offer will be made for beta key holders to join the "head start" by buying a sub for 6 months at around $45

 

Official "release" date wil be 15 August, DAC will be activated from that date. New subs will be charged $15/month while existing active subs will remain at $10/month (for at least a year)
And a media blitz starts .. inviting people to join the headstart by taking a 12 month sub at the special introductory offer of $99 (normally $120)


PTS with "gold release candidate" and wipe patch 22-25 July

 

01 August - Live server offline for wipe and patch. DAC webpages go live
02 Augusty - Headstart period begins
..then..

15th August 2022 - DU day (release)

 

Thanks for posting.  Maybe I'll give the game another go on release.

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The game is not designed for such a quick release. This is not a game, but a half-finished product, which is not yet to be estimated, what it wants to be.
Of course there will be financial problems at NQ, the cost-cutting constraints are apparent and palpable. The game content, on the other hand, looks rather meager for a game - too meager and too unstable.
Considering that the planets are to be reworked again, no, I really don't see a release this year unless NQ throws an unfinished product on the market and will only sabotage their own name. (Some people claim that the brand name NQ is already negative....)
 The construction site is simply still too big, I'm guessing more like 2024/2025 until then you can still put his time in the game, whether it is then really released later or simply goes offline, then also does not matter.

 

Edited by Zarcata
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38 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

I'm guessing more like 2024/2025 until then you can still put his time in the game, whether it is then really released later or simply goes offline, then also does not matter

 

That would make for a better game, but 2024 puts them at 8 years of development...I don't see how they could afford another 2 years of runway...?

 

They could do a soft release or label it "early access", but then that's just semantics....would still be a released game and they'd need to start marketing it. 

 

Expect a release this year. Maybe it won't come until winter, but I'm sure they were serious when they said that Athena was the last "major update" before release. I think at this point if NQ pulls it off and survives until 2024 everyone will be pleasantly baffled. 

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13 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

They could do a soft release or label it "early access", but then that's just semantics....would still be a released game and they'd need to start marketing it. 

 


This soft launch, let's call it "beta" was already the starting signal for the subscription ...., right? Only that it's actually a hidden alpha. but good. nothing shocks me anymore at the moment.
I find 8 years of development for such a project absolutely ok. The game itself doesn't offer much game content, it's more of a Minecraft and Eve mix, still at the very beginning - let's hope that this will change positively with time.

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On 5/31/2022 at 8:22 PM, blundertwink said:

They could do a soft release or label it "early access", but then that's just semantics....would still be a released game and they'd need to start marketing it. 

 

The monetization of the game on a subscription basis where at the beginning it was said that the wipe was not excluded but would be our last resort (so to speak, hedge in the subordinate clause that it can happen after all), reflects here exactly what you are asking. In August, it will be 2 years where this course is driven.

 

However, it would not surprise me that they once again say something in a news and then do something else, as evidenced by many years of experience with this company.

"We hear you, we hear you!" /s

Edited by SirJohn85
Minor spell correction
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