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A LETTER FROM OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

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It sounds like people don't understand what Beta is.

Alpha and Beta are not the product. Alpha was closed testing. Beta is open testing. Release day is the finished product.

I have always planned for a wipe when the game launches with blueprints being the only thing not wiped and maybe the free sanctuary territory.

It's partially about fair play, but it's also about starting the game from the beginning as it was meant to be played as a completed work.
 

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2 hours ago, Hazaatan said:

I don't get why power management would come to ships.  There is already fuel.  Fuel is the power management.  If we get a nuclear or dark matter power source upgrade that does away with fuel, that would make sense.  But, I don't get why fuel is not enough pwr mngt for ships.  Give pwr mngt to static cores.


I have to disagree. I think it makes no sense to add it to statics, and only presents another burdensome thing to manage for no real reason.

 

With dynamics, it presents another avenue to balance ships for PvP, and adds actual build and design decisions to the process. If they add mining lasers, electronic warfare, and CCS healing mechanisms, it would also factor into that and help create more specialized ships.

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Power management does not necessarily have to be burdensome. The general idea is for it to let players tweak their constructs to their liking. I think if you want to achieve perfect optimization then yes it should be a painful/manual process maybe with some sort of added upkeep cost, but there should also be a range of options that offer benefits with very minimal requirements. My impression was something like mining units where you can choose to put in more time/effort with diminishing returns.

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32 minutes ago, Foregotten said:

It sounds like people don't understand what Beta is.

Alpha and Beta are not the product. Alpha was closed testing. Beta is open testing. Release day is the finished product.

I have always planned for a wipe when the game launches with blueprints being the only thing not wiped and maybe the free sanctuary territory.

It's partially about fair play, but it's also about starting the game from the beginning as it was meant to be played as a completed work.

 

"Complete work", heh. That's a good one. 

 

It isn't about the nature of alpha/beta, it's that this was a paid beta that charged a sub and they explicitly made persistence part of the value proposition.

 

No one would be complaining if they had been clear from the start. Yes, many people saw this coming as an inevitability regardless, but it's understandable to be annoyed when a company says the product is in a playable state and will persist into release, then changes their mind. 

 

It isn't like early access where your one-time buy-in is good forever. It's a sub, the context is very different. 

 

People understand what alpha and beta are a lot better than NQ...it's NQ that's created an unconventional beta where they charged a monthly fee, stated there would be persistence, then changed their mind.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't personally care anymore (just get it over with), but I wouldn't say that people "don't understand what beta is" because they're complaining. It's NQ that doesn't understand how to run a beta. 

 

The only other MMO I've even heard of charging a sub before launch was Pathfinder Online. You can guess how that one ended up. 

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59 minutes ago, Foregotten said:

It sounds like people don't understand what Beta is.

Alpha and Beta are not the product. Alpha was closed testing. Beta is open testing. Release day is the finished product.

I have always planned for a wipe when the game launches with blueprints being the only thing not wiped and maybe the free sanctuary territory.

It's partially about fair play, but it's also about starting the game from the beginning as it was meant to be played as a completed work.
 

How many other Beta games out there charge a monthly fee? 

 

Beta testing also used to done by paid employee's. 

 

I was paying to play a persistent world, not being paid to bug test a game. 

 

I would love a lawyers opinion on the legality of wiping for those that have paid a monthly subscription. 

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Just now, RugesV said:

How many other Beta games out there charge a monthly fee? 

 

Beta testing also used to done by paid employee's. 

 

I was paying to play a persistent world, not being paid to bug test a game. 

 

I would love a lawyers opinion on the legality of wiping for those that have paid a monthly subscription. 

The world moved on, people pay to play alphas now. 

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1 hour ago, Novidian Prime said:


I have to disagree. I think it makes no sense to add it to statics, and only presents another burdensome thing to manage for no real reason.

 

With dynamics, it presents another avenue to balance ships for PvP, and adds actual build and design decisions to the process. If they add mining lasers, electronic warfare, and CCS healing mechanisms, it would also factor into that and help create more specialized ships.

Then why have fuel?  

Fuel or power, but not both.  Makes no sense.  Unless power is a tier 5 upgrade to be superior to fuel but with limitations on ship design.  Not both.

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Please do not reset/wipe Sanctuary.

 

Please leave all our constructs on Sanctuary as they are.

 

Please give us ample warning of any wipe of Alioth so that we can take our stuff back to Sanctuary.

 

When we started playing you told us that our tiles on Sanctuary would be permanently ours.

 

I do not wish to start from scratch on Sanctuary.

 

Over the last year you have done things to cause me to have to lose all my bases on outer planets, and later to have to take down all but one of my bases on Alioth, and I have been playing less and less while I wait to see if everything I build is going to be destroyed again when the game launches.

 

If you destroy everything I have built on Sanctuary, I will not be building it again and I will be unlikely to continue to play DU.

 

If you leave everything on Sanctuary as it is then I will probably enjoy to keep playing with the new game and all 3 of my accounts.

 

I am hardly playing at the moment so that I do not waste any more time on building ships and structures that will be destroyed by you before the game launches so as soon as you tell us that everything on Sanctuary will be safe, I will start playing again with all 3 of my accounts.

 

It would also be useful to know whether you will be allowing us to keep all of the Quanta we have and all of the components and materials we have in our containers, as well as the materials used in our buildings and ships.

 

 

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What is the point in playing at this stage??? We NEED to know what will be wiped... because I want to start on a major building project (with all the honeycomb I cleaned up for NQ...) but still no news. Will we have build are cities and bases for nothing??? will our ships be taken away from us? will our major mining sites be lost which we spent hours and hours and hours to find? Will we loose our stockpiles of fuel? elements? talents? grrrrrr 🤬 and what about our schematics and our quanta??? I was going to spend more than a 150 million in quanta for specific schematics, but what's the point? 🤬🤬🤬 Sure we can keep our blueprints..... but I don't want to spend a HALF YEAR mining ore and creating sufficient honeycomb to be able to rebuild what I have NOW!!!!!!

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59 minutes ago, RugesV said:

How many other Beta games out there charge a monthly fee? 

 

Beta testing also used to done by paid employee's. 

 

I was paying to play a persistent world, not being paid to bug test a game. 

 

I would love a lawyers opinion on the legality of wiping for those that have paid a monthly subscription. 


These are digital goods that you didn't pay to own. You pay to access them. None of this you have any ownership rights to. They could decide to shut down the game tomorrow and all you have would be gone too. You have no legal grounds. You WILLINGLY pay money to play this game in early access and they never gave you any written contractual statement that they wont wipe. The hours you put into the game can be chalked up as your enjoyment out of this early access title that you paid for.

Please don't clown yourself with wild statements about lawyers and legality like this

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48 minutes ago, Shredder said:

The world moved on, people pay to play alphas now. 

 

Not really, though -- people pay to buy early access games...and the most successful early access games like V Rising or Valheim (or other games starting with 'V'?) are more like betas. They are far more polished than the early days of early access. 

 

This is a completely, entirely different context than paying for a sub to access a persistent MMO. 

 

The only reason NQ was able to charge a sub to begin with is because they stated that there would be persistence from beta into release...few would bother otherwise. 

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Translating Cyrille's Post:

#0 Cyrille: I’m Cyrille Fontaine, Creative Director here at Novaquark.

Translation: This is who I am, <insert credible title> Believe me when I say the following...

#1 Cyrille: A game like Dual Universe is a never ending labor of love and ongoing development, but there is a point when you just need to assess if it is ready for a release.
Translation: We promised way beyond our capability to deliver, and have decided to shove a broken game out for release cause we need revenue.
 


#2 Cyrille: Development of Dual Universe continues at full speed, and we’re spending the lion’s share of our focus right now on fixing bugs, stabilizing the game.
Translation: We 100% know our game is broken, expect months before you get new content.
 


#3 Cyrille: We’re close to deploying a brand new feature that we expect will be a hub for creators and merchants.
Translation: We are going to reskin the auction house terminals, and make them a player craftable asset you can place on your tile.

 

 

#4 Cyrille: We’re also working hard to deliver our promises to our Kickstarter backers that supported us from the beginning. 
Translation: Thanks for the money, we are obviously 4 years behind our delivery date.
 

 

#5 Cyrille: Our team continues to analyze game data and read your feedback to focus our efforts on where we can be most effective
Translation: We are reading your feedback and ignoring you, this will continue.

 


#6 Cyrille: Another gameplay feature we’re looking to add is recycling, which would enable ... turning parts of broken or unwanted elements back into components.
Translation: Our economy is broken, elements are worth less than their raw resources, here is a bandaid.

 


#7 Cyrille: The mission system is one area of focus for this goal in developing more complex, interconnected, and lore-oriented objectives. 
Translation: Our answer for PVE is more boring mission types which poorly reward players for their time.
 


#8 Cyrille: We’re also developing a power management system.... Players must decide how to specialize each ship
Translation: We are breaking your ships again, forcing major redesigns.... LULZ.
 


#9 Cyrille: We want to increase the quantity of discovered planets and moons... to produce planetoids the size of big asteroids,
Translation: Player population has fallen too much for multiple star systems as JC proposed, yet players are still too close for servers to handle the resource strain.


#10 Cyrille: One of the most resource-intensive features that we have to tackle is planetary warfare. It brings significant change to the game and, before we can achieve it, we have to bring PvP in general to a more mature state.

Translation: We Know PVP sucks, Planet Warfare in 2030

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1 hour ago, Hazaatan said:

Fuel or power, but not both. 

 

I'd say your average combustion engine car would beg to differ, they will require both fuel and a battery to start at least and your car radio still does not run on fuel.. it requires electricity. Now, it's obviously possible, if not likely that the engine will in fact generate the electricity required as it runs, and charge said batteries, but you still need both.

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eventually energy manament!! awesome!

really looking forward to this. its so ridiculus to be able to put everything on a construct that fits in its buildspace.

 

balancing will be a thing though but i hope we will see the first iteration before launch.

also @NQ please keep in mind that exisitng ships will need an "easy" way to be adopted to energy management without making them completely useless and the earlier we know how this will look, the better.

 

also as expected BPC are going to be kept, just like before. thanks for confirming! i dont care about the rest and since this is beta and i expected wipe anyway i´m completly fine with that.

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The only reason I paid for this game before release is talent points, as they were supposed to be persistent. As you guys a lot of times said, wipe would be very unlikely event, and only if something is really broken. There is nothing broken with talents.

A lot of people payed real money only to continue training their talents.
If you wipe it - it's just straight money scam.

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3 hours ago, BiGEdge said:

 gone, and NQ promissed no further wipes if not neccessarry.

 

Ehh.. no, they never did that.
 

They said they would prefer to not do another FULL wipe like the one pre beta and woudl not consider it unless there was an urgent and/or unavoidable reaosn to do it. At the same time, they have very clearly had a partial one on the table all the time.

 

NQ will wipe, you will get to keep your core blueprints and your talent points will be returned to the pool to respec. And it will happen in 2-3 months at most, A few weeks before release.

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Quote

One of the most resource-intensive features that we have to tackle is planetary warfare. It brings significant change to the game and, before we can achieve it, we have to bring PvP in general to a more mature state. We know that territory warfare is an important game system to many of you, so continue to help us improve PvP by engaging in fights to generate data for us to analyze and continue to improve the system.

 

I've waited and waited and waited for a _reason_ to return. Even when I was playing, the aspiration of territory warfare was always been my reason. I played expecting it to happen. I got to the end of my patience and stopped playing. The mining unit update was the absolute worst change ever; incredibly repetitive and boring. The only thing that will have me, an emerald backer, come back to even try DU again will be territory warfare.

 

Yet, you're asking me to "play now so we can get data". No.

 

I'm sick of the safe zones. The beta was completely botched with the dual launch of the sanctuary moon AND then Alioth being safe too; WHAT EVEN THE EFF! All the planets with their safe zones around them... just so incredibly frustrating.

 

What motivates activity is the chance to build something or acquire things *in the face of adversity*. I'm all for the sanctuary moon and the tile per account (I'd say that's too much even, but different discussion) for creativity to flourish. But the real reason to do anything needs to be once I pop out of the sanctuary moon, I can freaking die, I can lose something, but I can also conquer territory, be a pirate, hunt pirates, protect convoys, hunt asteroids, do missions, but all of that has to be under threat AND present opportunities for ME to be the threat. I know I can try really hard and go find a fight, but that's not what I'm talking about; I want to be in a fight as a by product of a more broad goal, and right now you have to simply find value in acquiring "stuff".

 

An incredible number of people in this community could design a start to territory warfare, and so can you. Just freaking do it. This post isn't about warfare being the goal; it is that the existence of it is what adds to feeling of accomplishment when doing literally anything else. That has been the key failure of this project so far, understanding motivation of the player. It has entirely rested on people's desire to be creative, and that only goes so far in a closed ecosystem where their creations die with the project.

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Nice one NQ, you got me!  I really thought there was going to be some decision on the wipe in there until I got to the end and it just said "we haven't decided to wipe yet but when we do you can keep your core blueprints".

Now where did I put that spoon ....

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8 hours ago, Endstar said:

Power... Will that mean yet again redo all ship designs? 

 

Yes, maybe no. I'm thinking their thinking along the lines of the ship CPU, Capacitor, Module/Slot system to give a ship better agility, speed, HP resistance, EMP weapons, maybe drones, but who knows, maybe its just a simple scroll bar like shields with a longer cooldown.

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8 hours ago, blazemonger said:

Please NQ, go with "Fleet", not "Flotilla"

Pretty please ..

Is this a french thing?

8 hours ago, blazemonger said:

 

Also, this letter in general really just reads as a combination of the last few monthly update mails.. Nothing new here.. AvA and player run markets still MIA. Rehashing all the "we are going to do this, most of which wasd supposed to be in at release to begin with, and then repeating the same spin on the wipe, now called a reset, is really getting old. And it is getting very tough to believe that you really need well past 6 months now to make a decision on a yes/no with regards to wipe pre release. Details, sure.. that can be a matter of factors and change over time, but whether you will or will not do a wipe shoudl really be set in stone by now (as I really expect it is).

We know it is going to happen, just not when.

8 hours ago, blazemonger said:

 

I would be interested to understand how NQ plans to pay for all this.. I mean, is NQ really expecting to gain and maintain player subscriptions well north of 6 figures on what is going to release in what I expect is single digit weeks by now?

Me too, I'm surprised the beta lasted so long, but maybe they didn't have a big enough player count in place. But now, after the wipe purgatory, I feel like the player pop is at an all time low and it will be difficult for them to build back in time (before the money is gone). But this is pure speculation. 

8 hours ago, blazemonger said:

 

It would be great to get something like "NQ has secured an additional 10 million of funding from our investors, allowing us to continue development past release and ensuring the stability of the company for the forseeable future". None of what was written really has much meaning if you can't show NQ will be around to make it happen.

 

Maybe they'll sell the Voxel IP? Maybe they have sold it. Hard to say with private companies, who don't communicate that well.

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2 hours ago, blazemonger said:

 

Ehh.. no, they never did that.
 

They said they would prefer to not do another FULL wipe like the one pre beta and woudl not consider it unless there was an urgent and/or unavoidable reaosn to do it. At the same time, they have very clearly had a partial one on the table all the time.

 

NQ will wipe, you will get to keep your core blueprints and your talent points will be returned to the pool to respec. And it will happen in 2-3 months at most, A few weeks before release.

I think we'll know about the release, maybe one last PTS, but then the respec for paid accounts and offers for beta kick start packages, DAC sale will all come on the release day, heck maybe they'll even shut down the servers for a week to prepare.

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