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DEVBLOG: THE ALIOTH EXCHANGE - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

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Basically:
Whoever makes the bigger decisions doesn’t see proper player markets or any other of the many ideas on the subject as priority.
Nicodemus thought he can help out by doing something that he can do almost by himself, with little need for any coders, game or asset designers to do anything, as he is pretty much just using the ingame assets, ingame mechanics, his GM tool set, and does nothing that could impact the economy. 

If you think "I could have done this" or "this has been done before", that is because you are right, one guy can do this, just that when Nicodemus does it and it is in the patchnotes it actually draws a crowd.

 

I see this as a "better than nothing" solution by one guy, while the rest of NQ does, erm, I dont know what.

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3 hours ago, NQ-Nicodemus said:

Greetings!
The goal of the Exchange is to provide a showcase for players to have the opportunity to sell or advertise their goods/services in DU. The directory and community information screens will be a place not just to find a local shop in the Exchange itself- but have further information available for players to connect with the lot holders, directing players to the other showrooms and attractions the community has to offer. The Exchange does not replace the player market system which was recently discussed in episode four of Ask Aphelia. The idea is to create a community hub to assist players, to enhance their exposure and outreach to the overall Dual Universe community.

Thank you for the response! I'm not used to seeing NQ responses in devblog threads!

I appreciate and agree a centralized place (or network of places) where players can advertise themselves is needed after the cleanup of the markets.

 

You mentioned this could the first of more. Is the thought to expand one Exchange over time, to accommodate more player spaces, or would there be more Exchanges spread over the system?

If there were multiple Exchanges, could a player or org have a space in more than one Exchange?

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40 minutes ago, Briggenti said:

Thank you for the response! I'm not used to seeing NQ responses in devblog threads!

I appreciate and agree a centralized place (or network of places) where players can advertise themselves is needed after the cleanup of the markets.

 

You mentioned this could the first of more. Is the thought to expand one Exchange over time, to accommodate more player spaces, or would there be more Exchanges spread over the system?

If there were multiple Exchanges, could a player or org have a space in more than one Exchange?

 

What about captains customs, or the many other places that had showrooms. I guess [filtered] player driven content.

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8 minutes ago, CousinSal said:

 

What about captains customs, or the many other places that had showrooms. I guess [filtered] player driven content.

They can still have their showroom, and put up an ad space in the Exchange. Doesn't affect their showroom and potentially brings more new-player traffic to it.

 

And just because its only 64 slots (16 per pad), doesn't mean only that number of players or orgs. A single slot could be an ad space for 10 showrooms (limit of 10 screens), or even more with lua on a big screen with touch programming. A single Exchange space could house a directory of sites, with descriptions. A savvy ad person could set that up and sell ad space.

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Sorry NQ but this is terribly disappointing once again

- centralized by AI, run by inexistent NQ ingame
- going against the player base civilisation building
- killing all the efforts and time put by some orgs to do such markets

 

Should have put more time developing some tools and interfaces, to achieve such type of markets driven by players!

but instead, once again, over and over, laziness and urge to get that game released as soon as possible drove you!

 

PS: with a wipe coming, who dares selling anything recently? are we keeping quantas?

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10 hours ago, Gottchar said:

Basically:
Whoever makes the bigger decisions doesn’t see proper player markets or any other of the many ideas on the subject as priority.
Nicodemus thought he can help out by doing something that he can do almost by himself, with little need for any coders, game or asset designers to do anything, as he is pretty much just using the ingame assets, ingame mechanics, his GM tool set, and does nothing that could impact the economy. 

If you think "I could have done this" or "this has been done before", that is because you are right, one guy can do this, just that when Nicodemus does it and it is in the patchnotes it actually draws a crowd.

 

I see this as a "better than nothing" solution by one guy, while the rest of NQ does, erm, I dont know what.

In some ways this is worse than nothing though isn't it.  I mean we have places like Freeport city and utopia station where this kind of thing could go on but having a GM supported one kind of undermines those because it means fewer players ever need to make their way to one of those places. 

 

Unless this becomes an advert for those places but then they could just put the adverts up at the districts.

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24 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

In some ways this is worse than nothing though isn't it.  I mean we have places like Freeport city and utopia station where this kind of thing could go on but having a GM supported one kind of undermines those because it means fewer players ever need to make their way to one of those places. 

 

Unless this becomes an advert for those places but then they could just put the adverts up at the districts.

Yes. This takes away from from the players.

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21 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Unless this becomes an advert for those places but then they could just put the adverts up at the districts.

I think that this is actually the real motivation for the exchange. While it is cool to see so many player creations and shops, the districts were at times a complete mess and GMs like Nicodemus were constantly having to perform cleanup. You know how it is, everyone wants the premium spots close to the market entrance to throw up their flashy signs. There were quite a few times where this has caused logistical issues and it also naturally inflates the core count in those regions reducing performance. The exchange can help alleviate this problem so it has my full support.

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15 hours ago, NQ-Nicodemus said:

Greetings!
The goal of the Exchange is to provide a showcase for players to have the opportunity to sell or advertise their goods/services in DU. The directory and community information screens will be a place not just to find a local shop in the Exchange itself- but have further information available for players to connect with the lot holders, directing players to the other showrooms and attractions the community has to offer. The Exchange does not replace the player market system which was recently discussed in episode four of Ask Aphelia. The idea is to create a community hub to assist players, to enhance their exposure and outreach to the overall Dual Universe community.

 

Great.. but ..

 

Why is this not integrated with markets? I made a detailed post on this three years ago with a suggestion of how to do this, keeping the market building at the centre of the "hub" and then create one or more "malls" on the outskirts of the market areas to allow players to place their market stalls, after vetting by NQ. Combine that with extended parking at distance and possibly trains going between parking, the malls and the market. All of this is possible in game now and all of it has been done already by players.

 

This idea creates commercial hubs and by possibly allowing bigger stalls up to S or even M size you could create a one stop shop area where players can come, buy constructs or services or whatever from stalls and then pop over to the market to buy the materials they need. It centralizes and solidifies this all-in-one organisational set of structures, and you could do this for maybe 3 or 4 of the current markets to spread it out a bit.

 

 

Right now, we have a place which showcases certainly goods in du-creators.org which is frankly a well-designed and managed site. Why does NQ not at least try and integrate this into their plans, talk to the creators of the site, give credit where it is due and pay the man. A lot of work has been done and it would probably be far easier to integrate that site INTO THE GAME.

 

Also, I could see potential for a "services" section on that site as an extension which then also get sin to the game as well as becomes available outside.
 

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On a positive note I LIKE THIS! Its like the shop window to the real store, park, city or other point of interest!

 

I think it is a nice place to drop a waypoint maker and mabey some decoration to draw people to the actual location where you have your themepark, shop or city!

 

By making it small you make sure people don't use it for something else then just that, a shortcut or promotional piece!

 

Well done!

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The Only way this can work, are create a price subaste for the plots, and make people coperate to own a plot for a limited timw, and then use this plot to show the different products owned by the asociates, and a VR station to visit the asoviates showroom.

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How about a 'test flight' option for dynamic constructs in the exchange? (Spawn the player and ship in a tutorial type instance.) That would allow new players to get a taste of flying with nil risk, and make it a great place to sell starter ships.

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IMHO this is bs. (cool for new Players yes..)

 

Whenever NQ takes two steps forward, they take three steps back.

 

WTF is this and why do you waste human resources for this stupid thing. Instead of the promised player markets (some of which already exist in small form), they are now being punished and marginalized by another glorious NQ development. 64 sellers for the entire community, who decides who gets these places? What do you do when an org sends 100 signups before another player makes it?
 

So I'm getting an XS Core to sell ships or scripts there, but I can't show or demo them. I can only show nice pictures on 10 screen. What exactly does a store like this do for me? "Buy from me, won't be shit" Thanks, but no thanks. Then I will rather buy up all the slots and make signposts everywhere to the ship shops of the players. Nobody wants your stuff NQ! Player-Driven! Not Developer-Driven! Go away! Oh and "Periodic refreshes of The Exchange" -> And once you've established yourself in the market, you're then just kicked out of there and lose your revenue.... When will the refresh be? Pff ask the Devs! Player-Driven ist just a thing they promised during KS, u will never see it here!
 

What kind of screw up is that in an MMO?

 

With this announcement and the announcement of what will be stay after a wipe, it is already certain that there will be a wipe. Can't you just announce it officially?

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To be honest ... the whole idea is a total mess and goes in the wrong direction. NQ is right that the players need more conncetion and communication to other ideas, projects and player groups, but the solution couldn't be a static construct on a static place. You deliver an idea which doesn't scale with the active number of players, could be build by players and needs regulary work from NQ to change the exposition. The rules are vage and the time frame for the exposition change is not even called. Will you do it, if someone by NQ find time for it ?

 

If you want a place for ideas and goods/ services who doesn't fit in the market, look like the players do it so far.

1. Discord - not the best solution. Not every player is in Discord or active on a special server. For some players it's a barrier.

2. extern websites - like https://du-creators.org/ . A barrier to, because it's extern, but widely known and used. Why ? We need something like this.
 

What we realy need is not a static, NQ managed, construct. We need more ways to communicate ingame.

1. A virtual ingame blackbord as part of the interface and menus. A place where every player can announce for a fixed time frame and and maybe some Quanta a message, commercial, call to the arms and so on. Nothing complicated a small menu to upload an image and some lines. A catalog which can see every player with pressing one button, without any barrier in DU.
2. An ingame calendar. In the past we had player driven events but no way to apply for it. Yes there is the discord-channel for events, but see Discord barriers. Same as point one, a way to announce my event for a limited time and for a price.

The goal of this is that a new player without knowing all websites or discord servers or a large org can log in, press one button and can see all the crazy staff other players do in DU and want to share. A static construct can not do this.

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3 hours ago, Calisius said:

On a positive note I LIKE THIS! Its like the shop window to the real store, park, city or other point of interest!

 

I think it is a nice place to drop a waypoint maker and mabey some decoration to draw people to the actual location where you have your themepark, shop or city!

 

By making it small you make sure people don't use it for something else then just that, a shortcut or promotional piece!

 

Well done!

Player built cities should be the shop window to the real store.  They exist now and some of them are really good.  The new player experience should be telling players how to find them and helping them get there.  Then things like adverts for a ship showroom, voxel/element shop or whatever go in the cities.  This is one of the only reasons to even make cities at the moment and an NQ made hub just takes people to that instead.

 

This is supposed to be a player driven sandbox.

 

 

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43 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

This is one of the only reasons to even make cities at the moment and an NQ made hub just takes people to that instead.

The game has proven several times that cities do not work at all. What you will find here in the game are villages, anything above that only manages to pull performance down abysmally, to the point of dc.
I would be very interested if we could build real cities and then fill them with life. Lots of residents, vendors, merchants...lots of interactions - it's just a dream though.
Ever tried to build a building that has 20 apartments in it as an example? Why should players buy apartments when everyone can build a house by themselves? What's the point of having a house at all, if most of it is just to contain the industrial facilities? Real "housing" has no meaning or use at all.
The gameplay itself is not designed for real roleplay at all, but seems rather sterile and monotonous.

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57 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Player built cities should be the shop window to the real store.

 

One player group was building a really nice promenade with shops, ideas, a big shipyard and were building some interesting ships..

Then NQ decided to patch the game and change some stuff around voxels which after the patch resulted in half the ships being built going missing.. Just chunks gone.. When players asked NQ for help, NQ went "not our problem" and simply refused to even consider helping.

 

Players left and have not been seen since, when asked about the game they say "it was a nice idea and could have been great"

 

That's NQ for you..

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3 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Player built cities should be the shop window to the real store.  They exist now and some of them are really good.  The new player experience should be telling players how to find them and helping them get there.  Then things like adverts for a ship showroom, voxel/element shop or whatever go in the cities.  This is one of the only reasons to even make cities at the moment and an NQ made hub just takes people to that instead.

 

This is supposed to be a player driven sandbox.

 

 

it can be a shortcut to your city? Its just a convenient place for new players to see what is around like cities, stores, etc

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Just another one of those uniquely awful ideas from NQ. Right up there with those changes to organizations that I think they still have on the backburner...

 

I forget how many people have said it already but it bears repeating. This is supposed to be a player-driven game.

 

Will player-created and owned markets ever be a thing? Some of your recent answers are starting to push me in the no direction, and now this?

 

Way back in the day when the markets were a mess I had little advertising kiosks at the main arkship ones. Interactive screens with static text that came alive with a functional and navigable menu when you stepped on a pressure plate. Elevated display screens at the top of the tower that cycled through the advertisements each time the pressure plate was triggered. I was thinking of building an actual store on my sanctuary plot back in the day before the parking rules existed.

 

Starting to think it was a good thing I didn't invest the time and effort, NQ did it themselves! I haven't done a single thing with my advertising side project since. Thinking of shelving it entirely because this... why even bother?

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