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DUAL ACCESS COUPONS - STATUS UPDATE - discussion thread


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13 hours ago, CousinSal said:

You are right the demand will be low for people to actually buy them to sell them for ingame quanta.  Like what you gonna do with the money?

 

Not just that, the cost of obtaining whatever you need is far lower than when a DAC should be worth in game. What that means is that you will be able to aquire the money needed to buy or make whatever far easier than what selling a DAC wil lgive you, it is far more efficient to just sit on the DAC and play for free while your stash lasts.

 

So I do not expect there will be much DAC on offer in game for a very long time, which in turn will mean demand will outpace supply by a lot and with it, DAC will be very expenive in game. to the point where it becomes unrealistic to expect players to fund gametime AND make enough to actualy play.

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On 5/21/2022 at 5:49 PM, Msoul said:

For @GEEKsogen and anyone else wondering how many DACs they will receive. Here is a quick overview:

 

image.png.78798ad6f53b2779eff0ef5675e6e71a.png

 

Note:

  • Early bird variants receive the default number of DACs for their given tier - see Kickstarter page
  • Founder accounts do not gain any additional DACs from supporter packs - see Support Article
  • These numbers could change so be sure to stay up to date with your DU news

Wait, there are people who will have 160 free DAC at launch?  That is soooo broken!

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On 5/22/2022 at 2:30 PM, VrArchitect said:

I just downloaded DU yesterday for the first time. I was not able to log in and there was no explanation why. Then I bought a one month game access and could log in. I stayed in game for about 8 hours and never saw another avatar on a Saturday.  Loved what I saw so far and very minor bug or two. 

 

Question, why is NQ charging a monthly fee if a) they are going to wipe, b) still in beta, and c) empty of players. And how do you sell stuff if there is no one to buy? 

 

IMO it's because they are dishonest and want to take as many monthly subs as they can right now regardless of whether or not that is the right thing to do.  They know people will cancel their subs when a wipe is announced so they keep putting the announcement off and claiming to be still discussing it.

 

IMO of course.

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41 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Wait, there are people who will have 160 free DAC at launch?  That is soooo broken!

 

Its been years, but if I recall those top levels were for people backing at over $2500 each.

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30 minutes ago, Pleione said:

 

Its been years, but if I recall those top levels were for people backing at over $2500 each.

 

The Kyrium tier costs 7,000€ -- so definitely not "160 free DAC" 😀

 

These people get a lifetime sub, so the DAC are only for alts or selling. I fully expect "lifetime sub" to really mean "1 year of beta and less than 1 year of release"; I'm not optimistic release will go well enough to keep the lights on. 

 

There were 6 people that backed at this level...I wouldn't be surprised if some of them don't even play anymore. 🤷‍♂️

 

Very very curious to know if anyone at the higher levels got that 1 hour conference call with JC and what was discussed, lol! 

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43 minutes ago, Pleione said:

 

Its been years, but if I recall those top levels were for people backing at over $2500 each.

OK, so I don't want to knock anyone's entitlements or say that people don't deserve what they get.  I just said it was broken!

The whole idea is that the game will be wiped to create a level playing field.  How can there possibly be anything like a level playing field if eveyone gets wiped and then someone gets 160 DAC on day 1?  It doesn't even matter if there are only 6 of these players, they can probably end up with double-digit billions within the first few weeks, hire people to scan for them, rush warp beacon production or whatever and disrupt the game in exactly the sort of ways the wipe was intended to prevent.

 

Saying that we need to wipe to create a level playing field and then giving some players 160 DAC is just completely broken, right?

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Now the wipe discussion makes a bit more sense actually.  I wonder how many wipe-backers are gold founders or above who stand to be rich again very quickly post-wipe in a game world where everyone else is poor and struggling for quanta?

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5 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Now the wipe discussion makes a bit more sense actually.  I wonder how many wipe-backers are gold founders or above who stand to be rich again very quickly post-wipe in a game world where everyone else is poor and struggling for quanta?

 

Or perhaps they will just burn one a month over the next 13 years... or burn 3 a month on a primary account and two alts for the next 4.5 years.  Why is them helping to seriously fund the initial development of the game somehow evil?  Just because you didn't do it???

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Using a wipe to balance a MMO is fundamentally wrong. Treating the symptoms (wipe), without addressing the cause (unbalanced game mechanics and not properly dealing with exploits) will never be anything but a temporary fix.

 

And yes.. I imagine that some of the full-wipe advocates are not necessarily doing it for altruistic reasons, since it will enable large org to use their knowledge about the game to completely dominate and take over.

 

 

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10 hours ago, Pleione said:

 

Or perhaps they will just burn one a month over the next 13 years... or burn 3 a month on a primary account and two alts for the next 4.5 years.  Why is them helping to seriously fund the initial development of the game somehow evil?  Just because you didn't do it???

It's not evil.  It's just not a level playing field.  Clearly they could use it in various ways and it wouldn't matter, but the fact that they have he option to monetise it very early on and nobody else does means that it is not a level playing field.

 

Why should someone who, for example, paid 3 subs for 2 years have all the value they got from that erased in the name of creating a level playing field when someone who spent less money on a rugby backer account, say, and contributed nothing ever since gets to have a big advantage?

 

If DAC were on sale for actual money then I wouldn't really have a problem with this.  Anyone who wants to could choose to buy a big pile of DAC on day 1 for money and so the playing field is level - everyone has the same opportunity but at a different cost.  But as it stands the backers will have a unique and limited resource which everyone else will have to pay quanta for.  Quanta which just got erased in a wipe.  And I think that's very unfair.

 

Not evil.  Not undeserved.  But not fair and definitely not a level playing field.

 

One way to fix it would be to give everyone DAC in exchange for the talent points and quanta being wiped, but I doubt NQ would do this at an exchange rate which matters because it means nobody would be paying subs after the launch for months.

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2 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

If DAC were on sale for actual money then I wouldn't really have a problem with this.  Anyone who wants to could choose to buy a big pile of DAC on day 1 for money and so the playing field is level - everyone has the same opportunity but at a different cost.

 

Not sure I agree with this idea -- when you make IRL money a factor it becomes inherently unfair as a game design. There's something a bit twisted about people grinding their butts off so they can (perhaps) trade their quanta to a rich person with a pile of DACs.

 

Part of the allure of an MMO to me is the fact that it isn't like real life; you can become a top player with skill, smarts, and determination, which isn't how real life works.

 

The tendency to bring IRL money into the game isn't a welcomed thing to me, especially for a sub-based game. 

 

DACs rewarded from KS are a different story because they are limited one-off rewards for early backing -- and considering that no one really expects that "lifetime sub" to matter much in a year or two, I think it's fair. 

 

The wipe isn't about a level playing field -- it's about presenting the game world as "new" because many, many MMO gamers like to join games on release day. That's part of the psychology of MMO gamers and is a reason many people joined the beta, too. 

 

Personally, I don't see this game staying online for more than a year post-launch, so I don't especially care if things are balanced -- and we all know that veteran players will quickly dominate, anyway. 

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2 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

Not sure I agree with this idea -- when you make IRL money a factor it becomes inherently unfair as a game design. There's something a bit twisted about people grinding their butts off so they can (perhaps) trade their quanta to a rich person with a pile of DACs.

 

Part of the allure of an MMO to me is the fact that it isn't like real life; you can become a top player with skill, smarts, and determination, which isn't how real life works.

 

The tendency to bring IRL money into the game isn't a welcomed thing to me, especially for a sub-based game. 

 

DACs rewarded from KS are a different story because they are limited one-off rewards for early backing -- and considering that no one really expects that "lifetime sub" to matter much in a year or two, I think it's fair. 

 

The wipe isn't about a level playing field -- it's about presenting the game world as "new" because many, many MMO gamers like to join games on release day. That's part of the psychology of MMO gamers and is a reason many people joined the beta, too. 

 

Personally, I don't see this game staying online for more than a year post-launch, so I don't especially care if things are balanced -- and we all know that veteran players will quickly dominate, anyway. 

OK, I actually agree with not having DAC in the game for similar reasons.  In general, though, it is always possible to buy in-game money for real money as this 'service' is offered for a lot of games by botters and the like.  Having something like a DAC does two things -- it legitimises the sale so people don't need to be 'cheating' in order to do it and it sets the price in such a way that if too many people try to pay to get quanta the price of quanta goes up a lot, discouraging them from doing so.

 

But in DU, the DAC is there because it is a part of what was promised in the kickstarter.  It being there, it should be available to everyone not just a lucky few.  Presenting the game world as 'new' is not, I believe, a particular advantage which is high on most peoples' lists for the wipe.  Most people, in fact, think that blueprints should be preserved because it is an advantage for new players to be able to see things which have been built, buy ships from other players, etc rather than being in a game with nothing to do and everything being made from scratch.

 

Regardless, if someone can suddenly become rich in a way others have no access to then I think that will break the game world.  I've personally put a large amount of hours since day one of beta into accumulating a few billion quanta and some ships, stations, etc. and the wipe will destroy all of these things.  Then I'll have 3 DAC.  But some people will have 40, 80 or even 160.  There's no way I will be able to catch up with those people no matter what I do, they will own the markets very early on and make it so it's not even worth me buying schematics because they will have made back the costs of theirs (and lowered prices accordingly) before I even get far enough to buy any.

 

For me, that's a non-starter.  If some people are going to have that many DAC, I should be able to buy some for RL money and compete.

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So... what about this option:  Early backers get DACs they can use in place of subscriptions for game time... but that is ALL.  DACs cannot be bought or sold in game.  Doing so would fulfill their backer obligation, backers could run one character or ten using their DACs - their choice, but it wouldn't have any in game economic impact (beyond secondary ones like a player multi-boxing).

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I have lurked here as a brand new newbie. What am I missing here? The game is in beta, ya'll subbed knowing it was alpha or beta. And beta most always get wiped before migration to production. This is true for most all software projects I have been involved with. Sure, time was spent building up and would be lost, but again it was beta and you had to know that right? At least, that's how I am approaching it. I am learning the game mechanics before release and would be a step ahead of others. And I am willing to pay sub for that advantage. 

 

As for DACs, if they were part of a contract with the initial round of cash supporters, then they deserve to do with them as they please. Without them there might not be a DU at all. They waited all this time for there investment to pay off. 

 

Lastly, who said life is fair and that an MMO should be fair?  As a dev, I like to eat and need revenue to do so. The larger my customer is, the lower the price they pay verses my smaller customers. Is that fair?  The more electricity I buy, the higher the price verses others, is that fair? The more money I make the higher tax percentage I pay. Is that fair? Life isn't fair, but is what ya make of it. But I would never expect an MMO funder/investor to be equal to me in an MMO. 

 

Just my newbie 2 cents and most likely way off base 🙂

Edited by VrArchitect
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1 hour ago, VrArchitect said:

but again it was beta and you had to know that right? At least, that's how I am approaching it.

you're missing some info's here - but possibly you stumble over them if you do some reading here and there

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12 hours ago, VrArchitect said:

Sure, time was spent building up and would be lost, but again it was beta and you had to know that right?

[...]

As for DACs, if they were part of a contract with the initial round of cash supporters, then they deserve to do with them as they please.

DU players probably going to tell you:

 

But they said they only wipe if it is really necessary. I have ideas A-Z about how to do it differently and they don't listen to my idea, so I am angry.

 

DACs are bad because I do no longer have an advantage by starting early. Yes NQ said there would be DACs but since I have invested time in the game I would expect NQ to change their mind and make DACs differently to what they said initially.

 

Also: I did some random building which nobody really cares about but I played 12 hours every day so I am important and all potential users at launch are irrelevant and NQ should only focus on me.

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On 5/27/2022 at 2:26 PM, VrArchitect said:

I have lurked here as a brand new newbie. What am I missing here? The game is in beta, ya'll subbed knowing it was alpha or beta.

 

I'll try and explain the problem for you and any other newbs. And yes I agree that without any information about what happened in the past, expecting a wipe when the game release would be normal.

 

So here is the deal. The key difference between DU and other MMO's is that the DU universe is supposed to be persistent. I.e any changes you to do the landscape or constructs you build, are permanent. That was one of the key selling points for this game during the kickstarter and early founding, and still is today if you look at how they sell the game on the main site.

 

And the thing that has people up in arms about a potential wipe, is that going into beta NQ proclaimed that this would be the last full wipe and that player assets would be forever. And the reason why they did this was so that they could justify starting with subscriptions before the game was released. And naturally most players then started playing the game "for real" from that point on, since NQ said it would be so.

 

But don't take my word for it. Here are some direct quotes from NQ:

 

From the official NQ blog "Major changes with Beta Launch!" in august 2020.

Quote
  • Global wipes and wipes in the future on Dual Universe

The wipe for Beta Launch is intended to be the last global wipe. However, there may still be partial wipes or upgrades in the future, as it will be necessary for various reasons to reset some aspects of the game (planets landscapes upgrades and such) during the Beta phase. For future wipes, as much of your assets as possible will be kept between before and after the wipe, in particular constructs will always be preserved, if necessary with special one-time-use blueprints (“Packaged Blueprints”) that do not require ingredients to be in the inventory. 

 

And here are some quoted taken from various youtube videos NQ did at the time.

Quote

 (1:30) the reason for a wipe would be "(there is) something that we need to fix and there is no other but to wipe to fix it. I don't see anything like that coming... it's something that would happen if we really had no choice..."

 

(4:45) "we're going to do everything we can so that we don't have to go through a wipe again"

 

 

(58:26) "It would be a very bad thing to say 'sorry guys, restart from scratch.'"

 

(15:53) "Everything you build is forever"

 

(31:58) "Whatever you do after beta starts is going to stay in one way or another... You will get what we call for the moment 'magic blueprints'... blueprints with everything included in it so you will be able to respawn the things as soon as we restart the server. So we don't like to call it 'wipe'... The key thing is the beta is really the start... You can start to invest yourself in the game. We guarantee that you're not going to be losing everything at some point... the universe is blank again, and you have to start from scratch."

 

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Yes, NQ said that he wipe before beta start would be the last GLOBAL wipe. And I expect that to be the case..

 

Let's just take a moment and see what NQ referred to as a GLOBAL wipe:

  • The entire world is reset
  • ALL constructs are deleted
  • ALL claimed tiles are released
  • ALL quanta is deleted
  • ALL talent points accrued are deleted

 

So basically, every starts from scratch, all progress over the (pre) Alpha period was removed and as I recall backers ONLY retained blueprints.

 

If you have the expectation NQ will not perform a wipe like this again, even when they NEVER excluded doing so, I can only agree that is fair. And that is the very reason why I find the post NQ made on the wipe so silly and pretty much laughable. NQ in reality CAN'T do another full wipe and not just because they said they would not (unless they absolutely had to), but because they have no charged people MONEY to access the game and things like talent points are a DIRECT result of that subscription.

 

 

Having said that, I am certain NQ will do a PARTIAL wipe prior to release. And in this wipe;

  • The entire world is reset
  • ALL constructs are deleted
  • ALL claimed tiles are released
  • ALL quanta is deleted

 

The crucial part here is that existing players will retain:

  • Talent points accrued, which will be returned to the pool while trained talents are in fact reset.
  • Blueprints you have in any inventory are retained.

 

 

Just these two items will provide a MASSIVE head start for existing players and will effectively retain the value of having paid a subscription during beta. They do NOT pose an unsurmountable barrier for new players coming in as a new player can have 2 million talent points to start with (by using a referral code AND activating 2FA) as we well as catch up to about 80% of 2 years of trained talents by existing players in about 5-6 months.

 

So not only allows this wipe for a reset of the world and economy, it created a fresh foundation for the game to grow and still allows existing players a considerable but not unfair head start. Add to that what I expect will be a period of 1 or 2 weeks where existing players get to be in game before the "official" release, these players will be able to set up a good number of new and "updated" constructs and build up the start of the world in game without the interference of rubble and junk all over.

 

Overall, I really do not see how that is bad in any way. It will be beneficial for everyone.

 

 

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15 hours ago, PleiJades said:

DU players probably going to tell you:

 

But they said they only wipe if it is really necessary. I have ideas A-Z about how to do it differently and they don't listen to my idea, so I am angry.

 

DACs are bad because I do no longer have an advantage by starting early. Yes NQ said there would be DACs but since I have invested time in the game I would expect NQ to change their mind and make DACs differently to what they said initially.

 

Also: I did some random building which nobody really cares about but I played 12 hours every day so I am important and all potential users at launch are irrelevant and NQ should only focus on me.

How much does that chip on your shoulder weigh?  I resemble the "I did some random building" but never stated your conclusion.  Shame you can't recognize opinions when stated and value that other people may have different ones than yours.

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4 hours ago, Pleione said:

How much does that chip on your shoulder weigh?  I resemble the "I did some random building" but never stated your conclusion.  Shame you can't recognize opinions when stated and value that other people may have different ones than yours.

Just stating my opinion of what I read on the forums.

I realize that people get deeply emotional when it comes to their creations. Problem is that most of the buildings in DU are only interesting visually but have no purpose/function. Which makes them "random" in my point of view. And that has also been stated over and over again by other people on the forums.

However the usual DU player completely ignores that criticism and is happy with their "creations without a purpuse"="random building". From my perspective.

Furthermore the huge amount of DU players who are simply against any changes which involve PvP and which are completely not able to even try to understand other opinions is the main reason why I stopped playing.

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32 minutes ago, PleiJades said:

 

Furthermore the huge amount of DU players who are simply against any changes which involve PvP and which are completely not able to even try to understand other opinions is the main reason why I stopped playing.

There's a huge amount of DU players?  Where to they hang out?

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7 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

There's a huge amount of DU players?  Where to they hang out?

Huge percentage. Sorry. The huge amount of DU players is probably not existant because everyone is so focused on their "buildings without purpose" that they don't care about actual gameplay/changes which could bring in more players. For example PvP, wipe or: PvE!

However we all know that PvE will never happen. Which is probaly the reason why all discussions are basically endless repetitions about the same problems because we all know that the main problem will never be addressed.

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2 hours ago, PleiJades said:

Problem is that most of the buildings in DU are only interesting visually but have no purpose/function. Which makes them "random" in my point of view.

 

My large core space station "JITA Trading Center", was two days away from getting the last component needed for a warp beacon prior to 0.23.  With the beacon, it would have been the first space based trading center, a mere 5km inside of safe space, between a fairly short 400-580km of Jago, Lacobus, Sinnen, and Symeon - and 114-355km of Aloth, Madis, Thades, Talema, and Sicari.  It already had supplies of all three fuels for sale, warp cells, and misc other items.

 

I'd say that would have had purpose, and given that NQ just announced their own (so much for a player made infrastructure), not a bad idea.  Hardly "no purpose/function", which I find insulting to be assumed.

 

It's still there, dead in space now:  

::pos{0,0,18639536.3581,-6229405.6982,10517615.3317}

 

Post 0.23, the schematic needed originally cost 840,000,000 quanta, and functionally stopped my efforts (and game play).  We have about 50M quanta between the team that helped build it.

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15 minutes ago, Pleione said:

 

My large core space station "JITA Trading Center", was two days away from getting the last component needed for a warp beacon prior to 0.23.  With the beacon, it would have been the first space based trading center, a mere 5km inside of safe space, between a fairly short 400-580km of Jago, Lacobus, Sinnen, and Symeon - and 114-355km of Aloth, Madis, Thades, Talema, and Sicari.  It already had supplies of all three fuels for sale, warp cells, and misc other items.

 

I'd say that would have had purpose, and given that NQ just announced their own (so much for a player made infrastructure), not a bad idea.  Hardly "no purpose/function", which I find insulting to be assumed.

 

It's still there, dead in space now:  

::pos{0,0,18639536.3581,-6229405.6982,10517615.3317}

 

Post 0.23, the schematic needed originally cost 840,000,000 quanta, and functionally stopped my efforts (and game play).  We have about 50M quanta between the team that helped build it.

 

Ok so even if yours did, most don't.  Not everyone in game is gonna make a trading outpost. So then that means 99.9% of people's static structures just hold their stuff in containers. Sure you can build it up to look nice or something but it serves no other purpose other than holding your assets or running your factory.  Don't need walls or floors or ceilings. That's why I've always said the building and voxels are the worst part of this game.

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