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NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread


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On 7/18/2022 at 4:50 PM, Hecticus said:

I just hope they see all this and backpedal some like they did with construct slot changes.

 

There is a few differences between that and this.

 

I expect that NQ already has the change done and is just waiting for the scheduled patch to bring it to live. They also do not have time to make any changes anymore as we are very close to release.

 

So while I can see the need for a change and I read some good examples of alternatives which are vastly better than this option, such as THIS or THIS ..

 

But the problem here is that NQ probably only has two choices, either push the change they now have and risk it for the Biscuit OR leave the existing system in place.

 

And while the existing system is the lesser of two bad implementations IMO, I fear NQ will just shove in the changes regardless and hope for the best.

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57 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:

I expect that NQ already has the change done and is just waiting for the scheduled patch to bring it to live. They also do not have time to make any changes anymore as we are very close to release

 

You're probably right. 

 

The worst part is that there's actually no way for NQ to test this change, even on live. 

 

There's no way to balance an economy when pops are low and many players expect a wipe coming.

 

That alone changes the value of quanta and how people play -- a lot of people are only logging in to train skills or check their ever-increasing list of timers. 

 

If they really want to test the economy after this change, they need to sort this wipe BS...otherwise there's the grim prospect that the first time this change is actually exercised at scale is on release.

 

You can't test an economy 3+ months after you announce that it'll likely be wiped, but don't explain to what extent or when or give any real updates in the months to follow. Yeah, that's a great basis for beta testing the most critical changes before the game goes into feature lock, haha! 

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So, instead of adding actual fuel to industry, like every other factory game, NQ is turning schematics into fuel...  The correct answer is right there, it's in every good factory game that I have ever played.  It should have been generators leading up to reactors to give more elements to play with and manage... 

 

This is a train wreck.  I didn't think anything would surpass New World for the most epic-dumpster-fire-trainwreck of a release, but NQ is lining it up so DU has a really good shot at surpassing New World for the worst release.

And just like New World, the only thing more cringe than the train wreck itself, is the white knights that follow saying everything is fine.

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10 minutes ago, Hazaatan said:

So, instead of adding actual fuel to industry, like every other factory game, NQ is turning schematics into fuel...

And what exact problem fuel solves? it is just another type of "ore" you put into the industry to produce elements.

While new schematics limit incoming elements per account, which is a must to be able to balance economics.

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1 hour ago, AdmiralYolomoto said:

And what exact problem fuel solves? it is just another type of "ore" you put into the industry to produce elements.

While new schematics limit incoming elements per account, which is a must to be able to balance economics.

 

First, balancing economics isn't nearly as important as creating engaging gameplay -- the economy exists in video games to stimulate engagement, not for its own sake. In this, NQ has started to put the cart before the horse. 

 

Fuel/energy does gate production just like schematics. Your factory produces limited energy (which requires fuel to keep running) -- more production means needing more power plants, not just more fuel. That's a gate, and a big one depending on how it is balanced. 

 

Fuel/energy could offer more logistical complexity than shoveling paper into machines from your backpack. That's the thing about every good factory game -- production itself usually isn't as challenging as logistics

 

There's a reason logistics should be a focus -- it means more people having a reason to fly or haul, it could make the location of your factory more relevant, and it creates more engaging loops in managing potentially different types of power generation. If you could sell power? Well, that's more reasons to cooperate. Logistical complexity would encourage a lot of the gameplay people are missing now. 

 

Logistics will never be a real thing in DU, though, because DU insists on every action being done by human beings (and there's no player-built markets). 

 

So without better tools, logistics comes down to needing human haulers, which is severely limiting and boring. That means less targets for PvP, less interesting industry/factory gameplay, and few reasons to even leave your hexes. 

 

TLDR: fuel / energy is a solid idea IMO, but NQ doesn't have the time and really making it work well would require too many other changes they don't want to do

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Fuel or energy management will "control" the mechanic. It will be what allows the mechanic to work.

 

It really is not that difficult to implement but as it is a control/management system, it really needs to be in early and at the core of the code so it can reach everything en vice versa. NQ never bothered to implement it and at this time if they did it would at best be a bolt on.

There is a few good posts on the forums which show how a proper system could work like THIS one. It shows a mechanic which is at the core of the code and so can control (or be made to control) what you can do on a core. When everything on a core needs to "report" into this and report what power is needed, you can teak numbers to manage what can be done on a core and what needs additional resources. you could add batteries for instance which wil then make more energy available and you can add generators to burn fuel and allow energy to be replenished. 

And in that way, you effectively give players a way to manage their needs while you still maintain a way to control how that will work and what cap (if any) is set for that. None of this exists in DU and at this point there really is no way (outside of a complete rewrite of core code) to add and whichever way you do, it will massively disrupt the game.

 

NQ has had their chance and has been given good ideas and feedback on this, but they choose to ignore it all.

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25 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:

Fuel or energy management will "control" the mechanic. It will be what allows the mechanic to work.

 

It really is not that difficult to implement but as it is a control/management system, it really needs to be in early and at the core of the code so it can reach everything en vice versa. NQ never bothered to implement it and at this time if they did it would at best be a bolt on.

There is a few good posts on the forums which show how a proper system could work like THIS one. It shows a mechanic which is at the core of the code and so can control (or be made to control) what you can do on a core. When everything on a core needs to "report" into this and report what power is needed, you can teak numbers to manage what can be done on a core and what needs additional resources. you could add batteries for instance which wil then make more energy available and you can add generators to burn fuel and allow energy to be replenished. 

And in that way, you effectively give players a way to manage their needs while you still maintain a way to control how that will work and what cap (if any) is set for that. None of this exists in DU and at this point there really is no way (outside of a complete rewrite of core code) to add and whichever way you do, it will massively disrupt the game.

 

NQ has had their chance and has been given good ideas and feedback on this, but they choose to ignore it all.

 

You are right NQ never thinks of foundational mechanics. Everything is a bolt on. Same with Asteroids, we get a shitty dsat and it's done. Instead they could of made a long range scanner that not only detects Asteroids but other ships. It would be a foundation to add other gameplay. And to find those Asteroids you would have to fly out in space and look and scan for them.  Makes the pvpers have to move about too Instead of sitting checking a dsat every 20min.

 

There really isn't any good foundation mechanics in this game at all.

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I would go as far as to say there is hardly any design at all in this game,

and it is absolutely for sure they have no master plan to follow or any idea of how it all is supposed to work as a whole.

 

And because they don't have a plan it means that changes are almost always purely reactionary to some specific issue without looking at the whole.

 

And this is made even worse since the few times NQ actually introduce a new feature, it is with the mindset "how can we check this item of the list with the least effort and/or hack existing functionality to do the job", instead of focusing on what would be best for the overall game design and play ability.

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13 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

I would go as far as to say there is hardly any design at all in this game,

and it is absolutely for sure they have no master plan to follow or any idea of how it all is supposed to work as a whole.

 

Just to put this out there....DU has a 3-person design team as of now per a video put out by their design lead. 

 

The design lead's design credits include:

  • 1993's "Pac in Time" by Kalisto
  • 1993's "Fury of the Furries" by Mindscape
  • 1997's "Nightmare creatures" by Activision
  • 2015's "Trivial Pursuit" by Gameloft S.E. (yes the board game)

The mining mini game starts to make sense, doesn't it...?

 

This is a designer with more experience in simple/arcade style games...so simple timers and mini-games probably feel very comfortable.

 

I don't want to be too harsh...but is this really the right experience for designing an MMO? 

 

Compared to the former Eve online designer who quit after <1 year...which, we still don't really know the story of why they left. 

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13 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

Compared to the former Eve online designer who quit after <1 year...which, we still don't really know the story of why they left. 

I have commented on this earlier.

And my opinion is that a year is about the shortest time it takes for someone who has just reallocated to a new country/job, to go "ooooshit" and then find a good job (at their home country) again before leaving.

 

And this is one of the many, many things I hope we get to know the truth off once NQ goes belly up (most likely) and past employees can speak out.

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51 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

I would go as far as to say there is hardly any design at all in this game,

 

This is probably not far off. JC envisioned DU to literally be box with sand and _everything_ in it was to be done by players. In the "design" as it went to alpha, there was an ark ship location which led to a tutorial location and from there you had .. nothing.. and the players were to do it all.

 

Players were supposed to organise, be the ones to build markets, and so were given the option to "do everything" in an org structure and work towards that. Orgs create wealth and from it create marketplaces where they sell their output, competing with each other. And from that competition other things can organically evolve, including conflict. That was the idea of the game's main design and to be honest that sounds not terrible to me. (and in broad strokes, pretty much describes EVE, which is the big inspiration for DU).

 

 

The player markets never happened though, that is now all controlled by NQ. The rest of the game is still in a mode which really drives orgs to become self-sufficient entities and they do not need the markets at all in either direction. And NQ just keeps trying to make this a player problem while it really is a core design problem of the game which they just refuse (or are incapable) to see, regardless of how clearly it is being pointed out to them.

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Actually, the initial tutorial idea I thought was great but at the time NQ did not have the experience and/or knowledge to fix the massive issues they had with each player coming in entering an instanced tutorial.

 

The tutorial allowed you to build a simple hover and then a space capable small construct. You would then leave the instance with your construct and re-enter the "real" game world. It could have easily been expanded and have blueprints and a pocket ship added to "bring back".

 

The core idea was good though and frankly, with their current knowledge and tools in game, NQ could make it work just fine and expand on it, which I do think was the idea as I think this is what became the VR mode. But under pressure by now financially, for "beta" they choose to stick with their "temporary" idea of districts and then markets instead of going back to a good idea and implement it now that they had the understanding of how to do it.

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It was that initial idea that drew me towards this game also. And with JC coming from a science background I suspect he took inspiration from something called a "complex system", where the sum of many simple mechanics emerge into something much more complex like a complete ecosystem.

 

So while a complex system had never been proven as the fundamental design in a MMO, there was ample precedence for it working in nature, economics etc.

But all this was made completely and utterly pointless when NQ could not even bring the basic tools (simple mechanics) required for this into the game.

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4 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

This is probably not far off. JC envisioned DU to literally be box with sand and _everything_ in it was to be done by players. In the "design" as it went to alpha, there was an ark ship location which led to a tutorial location and from there you had .. nothing.. and the players were to do it all.


 

This is a reverie and you have built the game wrong from the beginning. The players should create everything? Then why the markets? Then why the market bots? Why then missions for an NPC system?
We players should do everything? At the moment, the game is far from that, because it simply lacks tools and opportunities for interaction. 
Actually, it's probably not even worthy of alpha status. NQ should either give up and hope to find a job elsewhere or start the project from scratch.

This includes thinking about the basic mechanics and what the game should represent in the end. It just seems totally immature, as if you put children in a sandbox who have no imagination or creativity... (yes, there are such children, they just can't play by themselves or keep themselves busy).
 

2 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

So while a complex system had never been proven as the fundamental design in a MMO, there was ample precedence for it working in nature, economics etc.

 

Our world is an extremely intricate ecosystem, connected everywhere from tiny to huge. It's almost currently impossible to "recreate" this on this scale, certainly not in the form of a sandbox game.

If you want to make a game, you should already know what is possible and what is not. What you want to offer the "customer" then. We have bought a product and expect accordingly that it works. At the moment I think NQ doesn't even know what the product is. Is it a voxel construction kit? Is it an industry building game? Is it a space game with huge spaceship battles? Is it an openworld game or a browser game with animations?

 

So far the game is a huge disappointment, if you think about what it wants to offer and how they market themselves, it's just terrible to witness them trying to somehow bring something failed to life here.

 

Edited by Zarcata
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27 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

Our world is an extremely intricate ecosystem, connected everywhere from tiny to huge. It's almost currently impossible to "recreate" this on this scale, certainly not in the form of a sandbox game.

I completely agree, but the game equivalent of this would be to give players more freedom then traditionally allowed to be creative and make a MMO that would probable be a bit messy and maybe even "unfair" at times.

 

And this is what pre-test/alpha should have been all about (and what I initially expected based on the Kickstarter), with NQ churning out all kinds of tools and functionality, and letting the test players (who at this stage expected there to be bugs and many, many problems) loose on them to see what happens.. and then once the chaos settled down (by actually listening to feedback) you would put a beta stamp on it and refine into release.

 

But we all know they never ever came close to something like this, and instead tried to tightly control the game loops from day one.. despite seemingly not even knowing how the final game should look.

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A proper menu for factions is generally missing. Not just an organization (although even for orgs the menu is ridiculous).
It also lacks the possibilities of diplomacy among the organizations and the factions, it lacks an election system per faction that is founded. It lacks possibilities to create more ranks. I just don't understand it, there are games that are already much further and have great content, there you can see how it works in terms of content. With NQ and DualUniverse, I have the impression that they have developers who are stuck at the 1999/2000 level. Does NQ even know the current game market, what is offered there? In what form, quality with what content for players and its possibilities?

 

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..and again it is because according to NQ's original premise it was never their job to design a market and a functional economy.

All they had to do was to give us barter functionality and the elements/LUA api needed to run and maintain a market our self.

 

But something happened just after the Kickstarter campaign completed, and it was like all the fundamental ideas for DU was just suddenly thrown out the window.

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

All they had to do was to give us barter functionality and the elements/LUA api needed to run and maintain a market our self.

 

The game was supposed to attract a large mass of "players" or did NQ only want Lua specialists to feel addressed here? Who had never dealt with lua or does not even know what it is, would not belong to the target group?

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sure.. Replace LUA with some kind of "drag and drop" rule system instead, and then allow LUA hooks into this system for the advanced users.

But personally I find the RDMS system in DU to be MUCH harder to understand then LUA scripting..

 

Edit: But the essential part would be to not hamper advanced users just to try and appease any casual players short term, since the game would be depended on the more advanced players to bring actual content into the game.  So that in the end it would be player made content (with easy to use interfaces) that would attract casual players, more then any tools made by NQ.

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I made a thread devoted to this topic, but it has been suggested to me to make this post here to ensure that NQ sees it.

 

@NQ

 

With the information that has been provided by since the schematic changes have first been announced, I thought I would give some more detailed feedback. As you are keen to rush this straight to the prod server, I think getting early feedback will be useful.
 

Looking Good

Adding an additional time component to the industry process looks like it will an effective and fair way to reduce the ability of any one individual to mass produce items, at least without a large quanta cost. This seems to have the potential to be fair, if the numbers are tweaked properly.

 

The Economy

This additional dependency on Quanta is problematic for the economy I think. It would not be the case if the economy was in better shape, but as it is we are suffering from massive deflation due to the large quantity of currency leaving the game. This is an entire topic of its own, but I will just say that I hope you have further plans to fix the economy. Your concept of "faucets and sinks" does not work in a real economy. Maybe in a single player game that works, but in a real economy, currency should circulate --not be created and destroyed--.

 

Tedious

If the system works as described, where players need to place schematics into each assembly machine, this will make the process quite tedious. This is not the tedium of hard work that is rewarded, this is tedium that is unnecessary and will not be well received. Existing industry players will react poorly, knowing how pointless this exercise is. New players will quickly find it laughable. The consequences of this type of manual process will be numerous and negative. Organizations that run factories will not be able to easily manage feeding machines with a small number of players. This means expanding access to factories to a larger number of players, which is a security risk and would be difficult to coordinate.

 

Suggestion to Reduce Tedium

Please create a way for players to interact with the factory as a whole. Since connections cannot be made across cores, a factory can be considered a core with industry elements on it. Perhaps an industry element, like a schematic catalog machine, could be created that would be one per core. Link a container as input to this machine and let schematics placed into the container feed into the catalog. Once stored in the catalog, any machine within the factory could be allowed to use the schematics within the catalog. This would allow management of a factory to continue much as it does now, with schematics becoming another resource that is consumed as it becomes available. Even smaller player factories would benefit from the design immensely, as this would remove one of the most hated aspects of the 0.23 schematics patch. Larger org factories would take much less tedious planning and tracking of schematics, as well as the chore of feeding the machines. Members could donate schematics my leaving them in a container and any schematic would be welcome and could eventually be used. The catalog machine could be quite useful in a factory, showing schematics that are stored as well as schematics that are needed to allow stopped machines to run.
    
I understand from your most recent video that you do not want to further automate industry, and I understand that desire. Implementing some way to feed schematics into the appropriate machines automatically would allow factories to be managed in a very similar way to how the currently operate. It is rather fun running a factory currently. If you feel factories need additional balancing, please do it via means other than intentionally making it miserably tedious.

 

Thanks for your time

Deathknight

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44 minutes ago, Deathknight said:

 to ensure that NQ sees it.

LOL ..

 

Good post though.. And yes, NQ may see it, whether they read it and take it to heart is another matter.. NQ is great at "hearing" but not so much at "listening"

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Well.. it's obvious now that NQ has not learned a thing from 0.23 or any of the mistakes they made since..

This is even worse than what I expected they'd come up with.

 

This will destroy what's left of the game's industry player base 

All the comments, the suggestions, the feedback and reasonable advice is, as expected, completely ignored and NQ just shoved possibly their biggest mistake yet down everyone's throat.

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This schematic change is uniquely making me angry, even more than patch 0.23.

Yeh, nice that parts don't require schematics, but the mere 5 copying slots and the horrendous copying times take the fun out of it for me. I'm solo player with a 7.5K elements factory and I feel like I'm being punished for my gameplay.

I've spent dozens of millions of talent points on indy+crafting efficiency just to get smacked in the head by this annoying time sink to decrease my "talents" in time.

There is no "fun" value added, only more chores and waiting times.

- every done copy in a batch should be made available at once, not as a whole batch at the end (abandon this "batch" mechanic)

- waiting for 10 hours for a T4 product schematic batch is just painful

- 5 slots is a joke (UI wise, doesn't even fit on a single screen for me)

- don't make us require more talents, the overall talents "pool" is overblown already as it is

Really hoping for fast improvements to this. Motivation to play is gone.

 

 

 

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