Jump to content

A LETTER FROM OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

Recommended Posts

9 minutes ago, Hazaatan said:

Let me ask: If you knew for a fact that keeping your skills results in less new players, how many players are you comfortable in losing to keep your skills?

All of them. If those are the kind of players that will only play if I lose what I paid for, then I can do without those kinds of people/players. And how long will you keep those new 'players'? And will you keep doing new skill wipes every six months/year?

 

How many long time paying (subscription) customers are you willing to lose if you wipe Talent Points?

 

Now, it would be different that if I had 24 months of subscription on a character, NQ paid me in 24 DAC. While not exactly happy, that would make me consider staying. But that's effectively giving away subscription time=money, which imho they don't really have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

Initially I had the idea to test some cheap builds and BPO them for relaunch (in the hope we keep those), but with all the changes upon changes that keep getting rolled out. Anything I build now, might not work at all at relaunch, so why bother? It's not as if the 'gameloops' themselves are fun and satisfactory in themselves...

 

True.

 

Most of pre beta BPs are already useless.
"To keep BPs" is empty promise, because majority of BPs will be useless if changes after changes to constructs are introduced. Even many of static construct BPs are not working because of new element placement rules. "Power" implementation may break rest of them. Actually power may break all BPs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Iamhole said:

none, i dont see the issue, the way the forums read there is only 300 of us actually playing the game, so having a few people with skills when we go live will help the newbs coming to the game and allows us to help with directed training, having more talents than a new player is not game breaking. I cant see someone not playing just because i spent 2 years training before they joined up. Anyway, unless you tell people how many talent points you have no one will ever know. keeping my talent points is my reward for paying all that cash into the Dual Universe system to enable it to be launched. 

I am unable to see the reality in your post.  

Factory - This is the biggest part of the economy.  Who do you think will corner the market first?  the new player or the the player with tier 5 talents?

PVP - who do you think will have an advantage? the new player or the the player with tier 5 talents?

Mining - who do you think will have an advantage? the new player or the the player with tier 5 talents?

How will 'having' tier 5 talents help new players?  The experience of having had tier 5 talents would be helpful enough when you share the knowledge.

New players not playing because of OP players at start?  This is huge in a time based talent system.  Yes, people will stop playing, it's guaranteed.  It's not, will they stop playing, but how many.

New players not knowing you have max talents - In no way, shape, or form, will this game be able to keep the secret that some players have maxed out talent trees. 

 

Edited by Hazaatan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Hazaatan said:

Are you being serious? 

Yes

 

1 hour ago, Hazaatan said:

Go run your fuel car, with no fuel.  Fuel turns the alternator and charges the battery.  The fuel does the work.  Your car, runs on fuel.  Fuel = running car. 

Good luck starting your car without a battery. I mean you could if you really wanted to, but in any case you will require energy to start it, in whatever form that energy comes.

A combustion engine does not magically start running

 

 

  

15 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

"Polishing a turd" was the expression that came to mind while reading..

The post is pretty much just a rehash of what we already know yes. There was really nothing of substance  and as such it was just another filler post biding time for NQ to get to the point where they can make actual announcmeent  (wich I expect is not that far out).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Hazaatan said:

I am unable to see the reality in your post.  

Factory - This is the biggest part of the economy.  Who do you think will corner the market first?  the new player or the the player with tier 5 talents?

PVP - who do you think will have an advantage? the new player or the the player with tier 5 talents?

Mining - who do you think will have an advantage? the new player or the the player with tier 5 talents?

How many starting players will be able to make the optimal decisions regarding TPs and Talents?

 

Mining: Make one character with placement talents for autominers, make multiple characters with automining talents, make one pick up miner, make one manual (classic) miner.

Factory: Make one character with placement talents for factories, make multiple characters with factory talents that have specific nices.

PVP: Make one character with placement talents for ships, one for weapons, make multiple characters with different weapon specialization talents (Cannon, Railgun, etc.).

 

Use as needed... Depends how much of an advantage someone is looking for and how far (s)he is willing to open the pocketbook.

 

What happens a month after launch? How will new players then feel? After a year or two? With your reasoning, the game will never pick up new players beyond launch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

 A good way to consider how energy will work is to look at how construct maximum speeds have changed.

 

This one I really do not understand. How hard coded artificial limits of dynamic construct speed may have any relations to credible  (or scifi ) energy management.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

All of them. If those are the kind of players that will only play if I lose what I paid for, then I can do without those kinds of people/players. And how long will you keep those new 'players'? And will you keep doing new skill wipes every six months/year?

 

How many long time paying (subscription) customers are you willing to lose if you wipe Talent Points?

 

Now, it would be different that if I had 24 months of subscription on a character, NQ paid me in 24 DAC. While not exactly happy, that would make me consider staying. But that's effectively giving away subscription time=money, which imho they don't really have.

You have been paying for 24 months.  that's 10 for 3 months.  That is 8 payments of 10 dollars, which is $80.

I am going to make the assumption that you are a man.  I am also a man.  I don't know how old you are, but I am in my 40's.  I can look back to when I was 16 years old until now and I can say that I have spent significantly more than $80 at one time on dumber things, more times than I can remember or am willing to share.  If you're a man, so have you. 

If $80 got you 2 years worth of gaming and it is too much, your priorities are in the wrong place my friend.  This game the least of your problems.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

How many starting players will be able to make the optimal decisions regarding TPs and Talents?

 

Mining: Make one character with placement talents for autominers, make multiple characters with automining talents, make one pick up miner, make one manual (classic) miner.

Factory: Make one character with placement talents for factories, make multiple characters with factory talents that have specific nices.

PVP: Make one character with placement talents for ships, one for weapons, make multiple characters with different weapon specialization talents (Cannon, Railgun, etc.).

 

Use as needed... Depends how much of an advantage someone is looking for and how far (s)he is willing to open the pocketbook.

 

What happens a month after launch? How will new players then feel? After a year or two? With your reasoning, the game will never pick up new players beyond launch.

I understand.  But you are not taking into consideration that the game is dying.  We are now at point where we are going to have a game, or not having a game.  It's going to happen fast.  Are you willing to kill the game if it means an advantage in talents.  Knowledge of how the game works and where to put your points is advantage enough, and doesn't scare away new players.  

Making several alts should not be taken into consideration, because that's whaling.  Maybe not whaling, but at $15 dollars a month, how many alts can you really have?  Subscriptions are a hard sale to begin with.  NQ has to somehow sell an unfinished game for a monthly sub of $15... that is no easy feat.  Paying for multiple $15 a month accounts, just to have an advantage, in an unfinished game, that's borderline gambling addiction...

That's not a new player problem, or an NQ problem, that's a addict problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

What happens a month after launch? How will new players then feel? After a year or two? With your reasoning, the game will never pick up new players beyond launch.

This wipe is and never has been about anyone catching up. The whole catching up argument is nonsense as I have shown in detail a good many times here.

 

It's on NQ to bring that into the conversation in their post from April and one of the reason swhy that post was so horribly bad. NQ doe snot know how to control a narrative, in fact they have really shown to only know how to fan the flames even more and probably withouteven realising it.

 

 

  

47 minutes ago, Cergorach said:

if I lose what I paid for,

 

You paid for access to the server, for game time. Nothing more and nothing less.

 

If you say that you feel it would be good for NQ to do right by their subscribers and retain talent points, as they represent the mentioned gametime then I can understand that argument and agree with it. But you have no claim to make about anything you may or may not "own" in game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm. Persistent BPs is a good start. We can get on with fearless construction. But, not quite what we were sold: 

 

a57e22ce-a4d5-4f24-92bd-281fcd86309d.png

 

(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"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOp9nDzkxpc

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai3Kk37ntgg

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD00-V_LKog

(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."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syku-NmSg4s&t=1918s

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Megabosslord said:

Hmm. Persistent BPs is a good start. We can get on with fearless construction. But, not quite what we were sold: 

 

a57e22ce-a4d5-4f24-92bd-281fcd86309d.png

 

(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"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOp9nDzkxpc

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai3Kk37ntgg

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD00-V_LKog

(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."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syku-NmSg4s&t=1918s

 


Still quoting JC despite him being out of the picture for quite a while now and also for good reason, probably.

He made many promises, but NQ is not beholden to the promises of an ex-employee. Leadership changed, so did their decision making. I am not saying for the better, but a difference nonetheless.

Edited by Metsys
.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Metsys said:


Still quoting JC despite him being out of the picture for quite a while now and also for good reason, probably.

He made many promises, but NQ is not beholden to the promises of an ex-employee. Leadership changed, so did their decision making.

This.  I haven't seen anyone say it as short and as sweet as this post.  That promise, let it go. 

I ran out of hearts Metsys, or I would heart your post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Megabosslord said:

Hmm. Persistent BPs is a good start. We can get on with fearless construction. But, not quite what we were sold: 

 

All the quotes around wipe are relating to a full/global wipe like was deon before alpha, which is not what is being discussed and never was.

 

It's also where the Creative Director post is missing the point (as usual for NQ). a wipe with "just" blueprints returned IS a global wipe as blueprints are a hard commitment by NQ to be persistent across wipes anyway. So saying that you will at least get core blueprints really means exactly nothing.

This is why I keep saying that NQ has only two options, not wipe or wipe with BPs and talent points back to the pool.

 

The mention of magic blueprints was there, yes, but with several instances where players used (and were allowed to keep the results of) exploits would nullify that option. Just spawning back all the stuff you should never havve had would be bad. And seeing how NQ never really acted on any exploits (unless they made them look bad) for me is another signal that the partial wipe was always the plan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

En débutant merci d’avoir publié cette nouvelle pour nous mettre au courant de la direction vers laquelle le jeux ce dirige. Vous aviez et de loins un des jeux les plus intéressant et addictif que j’ai vu en une longue période de temps. Lorsque j’ai débuté le jeux j’apprécierais miner sur différentes planètes pour faire de l’argent, demeter est sorti ce qui a rendu cette opération inutile, j’ai donc décidé de me convertir vers l’industrie, avec l’économie actuel sa me coûtais plus chère à produire que le prix de vente, je me suis ensuite converti pour faire des missions, avec la modification de vitesse le risque est désormais rendu trop grand. Donc en gros pour quelqu’un comme moi qui n’est vraiment pas intéressé par le pvp ce jeux n’est simplement plus pour nous. En espérant que votre prochain projet me rejoigne plus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Metsys said:


Still quoting JC despite him being out of the picture for quite a while now and also for good reason, probably.

He made many promises, but NQ is not beholden to the promises of an ex-employee. Leadership changed, so did their decision making. I am not saying for the better, but a difference nonetheless.

Learn to read. The screenshot of a post still live on the forum is from NQ-Nyzaltar. And stop complaining it's not what you want just because you weren't paying attention. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Hazaatan said:

This.  I haven't seen anyone say it as short and as sweet as this post.  That promise, let it go. 

I ran out of hearts Metsys, or I would heart your post.

You apparently don't know how companies work. Because an exec leaves doesn't mean the company isn't still liable for commitments made. Anyway, read the post again. It wasn't just JC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

 

All the quotes around wipe are relating to a full/global wipe like was deon before alpha, which is not what is being discussed and never was.

 

It's also where the Creative Director post is missing the point (as usual for NQ). a wipe with "just" blueprints returned IS a global wipe as blueprints are a hard commitment by NQ to be persistent across wipes anyway. So saying that you will at least get core blueprints really means exactly nothing.

This is why I keep saying that NQ has only two options, not wipe or wipe with BPs and talent points back to the pool.

 

The mention of magic blueprints was there, yes, but with several instances where players used (and were allowed to keep the results of) exploits would nullify that option. Just spawning back all the stuff you should never havve had would be bad. And seeing how NQ never really acted on any exploits (unless they made them look bad) for me is another signal that the partial wipe was always the plan.

 

Linear thinking. They could easily do a honeycomb+LUA-only magic BP with elements having to be sourced again. Destroying any voxel/LUA creations is just bad business. Half the value of the whole IP is stuff players have built from voxels/LUA. Keeping honeycomb and LUA has no detrimental effect on other players. Worst case, there's a glut of honeycomb after launch which only deflates the price of honeycomb for new players - but no one is spending money on honeycomb early game if we're all broke again, so no one is getting rich selling honeycomb. Bottom line though: It's a total red herring worrying about players who got rich off exploits. It's a nonsense. And shouldn't be a factor in wipe design. Many more players got rich(er) off hard work, or OP mission running/ALT loophole. All the billionaires I know did it through a daily slog of doing jobs/builds for other players, and one from missions/ALTs. The only reason to wipe is to satisfy those who feel inadequate starting a game where others are ahead of them - in which case they'd never start any MMO ever post-launch. (Not sure that's even the kind of player you want in a community.) (A) It's weak to ask for a reset rather than try to catch-up. That kind of person just falls behind and complain again anyway. (B) As shown above they joined up in the context that NQ had said 'no wipe' and now want the terms changed to suit them,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Energy = power grid / core size, this mean limited number of combined engines, and sounds perfect in dinamic engines , and also in static engines, to limit the mega factories size.

 

Recicling also sounds really nice, is just a mew way to sink the overflow stocks of items.

 

Territory warfare, sems a bait, i no belive you du it before the launch.

New biomas, celestial objects, etc... Sounds nice.

 

PvE missions need include instanced combat missions.

 

And my final touch, NQ be brave and stop the lies in the ongoing discussion excuse, just say, wipe is comming and we are discussing the details.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

59 minutes ago, Metsys said:


Still quoting JC despite him being out of the picture for quite a while now and also for good reason, probably.

He made many promises, but NQ is not beholden to the promises of an ex-employee. Leadership changed, so did their decision making. I am not saying for the better, but a difference nonetheless.

 

If CEO of the company makes statement it represents the Company, not person or personal opinion.

Please stop this JC nonsense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Hazaatan said:

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.


Cars utilize both, so it’s not unrealistic. I mean, try driving a car long without an alternator and tell me how that goes lol 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Novidian Prime said:


Cars utilize both, so it’s not unrealistic. I mean, try driving a car long without an alternator and tell me how that goes lol 

 

If speaking about energy source, standard cars have only one energy source - Fuel

Alternator uses energy generated by it's engine from fuel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think your getting caught up in semantics here but either way it looks like we could benefit from further details/clarification on the scope of power management. I see it as a carrot but clearly some of us are worried its going to be more of a stick.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you open the website www.dualuniverse.game you will read in bold text:

"Dual universe - the space mmo entirely built and driven by players"

 

This is actually pretty correct. We, the players built this MMO. Well... atleast the content. And now NQ has plans to destroy our hard work. Wipe it clean. Destroy the market even more than it already was (by the decision of NQ to introduce schematics). Not only will the market be cleansed of all products that are for sale in a reset, but it will be sacked for another half year when NQ introduces power systems if players will still be there to witness that feature... Again our factories will stop working and be idle. Many of you have no idea what the impact will be on players that have large or mega factories. I will tell you what the effect will be: they leave the game utterly disappointed. Me myself I have chosen not to create those factories yet, because I have seen the devastation around a half year ago and I'm more of a salvager. I cleaned up atleast 35 territories which mostly contained large factories. The players left. I requisited their constructs and at this moment there are more than 3000 factory elements in my underground warehouse like furnaces, assembly lines in various sizes, smelters and so on. And since the 1st of May I have been busy possessing abandoned dynamic and static constructs. Today is the 8th of June so I spend more than a month working hard to collect everything and recycling most of the ships I found. Now I know for a fact a lot of other 'vultures' like myself did the same thing. If you think about that you might be able to imagine how many players have left the game, especially after the introduction of schematics. Is NQ doing things right? Yes, they do fortunately! And I hope they will continue to do so and NOT wipe this game in the state as it is in right now. Because abandonment has caused a lot of constructs to be wiped already. Because you don't want to truncate the database in seconds all the work the remaining active players have put in this game. Don't do that please... Personally I think I already spent more than 2,000 hours of work in this game. If you want to wipe something, then I would say wipe all quanta which is above the 5 billion limit so you will hit the peeps that abused the mission system. @NQ if you still want to wipe, then let the remaining active players keep one static construct M or L on one territory of their choice for them to keep besides the one on Sanctuary. So they can put all their honeycomb, elements, schematics, blueprints and so on in containers to keep that stuff safe from the reset. Also don't touch their talent points, maybe reset all talents, but don't touch our points. Let players keep a maximum of 5 billion quanta (owned org quanta included). Give the players enough time to blueprint and after that tear down their cities and buildings and spaceships to prepare for the reset. Give us time to collect our rare and exotic mining units from distant planets where we currently mine our higher tier ores (and I will still be p*ssed about loosing my T5 mining grounds...). Give us time to collect our stuff from the market containers. Give us time to pick that one territory to keep which we have been calling our virtual home. Give us time to document our bookmarks. Stop grieving players by destroying what we've worked for. This game is not just any other game, this is the game the players are building. And don't tell me it's not fair for beginning players if there is no complete wipe... or are we going to wipe anually??? There will always be veteran players and beginning players. A complete wipe won't change that, so stop wining about it.

 

Wipe our assets, you wipe our creativity and you wipe the content of the game and I'm afraid this will kill Dual Universe.

Is it a real life money problem? I'm a silver backer and I'm willing to put another amount of cash in this game to make it work and I'm sure others will too. (to be honest I already spend almost 2,000 euro to upgrade my hardware to play DU... I must be bonkers...)

 

Sorry for the rant, but I hope it will give you (NQ) wisdom.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Msoul said:

I think your getting caught up in semantics here but either way it looks like we could benefit from further details/clarification on the scope of power management. I see it as a carrot but clearly some of us are worried its going to be more of a stick.

 

True I am.

But what can I do I'm just so frustrated.

 

And yes I'm afraid that "Power" will break everything again. If that happens after launch it will be worse that 0.23 catastrophe. And there will be no more "Launch nor wipe card" to play.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, merihimRefin said:

shiiit. I played wrong the whole time. Did some farming and shit and didnt make blueprints. Damn :D

The players who really win are those who paid to have custom ships built with exclusive DRM free BPs. They get to keep the BPs, and builders like me lose the money we were paid, and the time we spent building them. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...