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A letter to the devs...


BiGEdge

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11 minutes ago, BiGEdge said:

You know,
i try to put me into NQ. Has something to do with being empathic.
If i was NQ, i see the active players i would cry and lose ambition to work for those whining, ungrateful but paying customers.
Even if you listen to suggestions, deviate from the plan and the initial vision to fulfill stupid suggestions that were never planned,

work your ass of to implement many of those things into a game where the players were intend to create the content.
Dosnt it feel like a waste of time, when the community is whining even louder after you devided from the plan to just implement the tools for the players and not the content?
Well if i were NQ i would think about ever listening to this ungrateful community again and try to finish the project as soon as possible without breaking too many promisses.
I would tell the community to not being that negative and tell NQ not just where they failed, but also where they have done something good.
But hey i allways try to be empathic, im not a fanboy...
Well... i lied, im a Fanboy after all 😜

 

Jokes aside, let us remind NQ why we wanted this game, why they wanted to fulfill this vision and let them DU theyre job...
And lets DU our job.
Both sides are the reason if DU will be unsuccessful. Not just NQ, but also the Comunity.
We in Germany have a saying
Sweep in front of your own door
or
Grab your own nose
Means befor critizising others, check if you cannot do it better, or
If you rely on others, then you are abandoned. So you have to do your job first

 

I'm empathic but guess what, if I fail at my job I get FIRED. It's the way the world works. Just because a company exists doesn't free it from criticism or responsibility.  NQ has failed and that's the reality so yes some people will lose their jobs after the servers shut down when "launch" fails to generate a sustainable player base. That's life we live then we die and companies form then they die.

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15 minutes ago, BiGEdge said:

You know,
i try to put me into NQ. Has something to do with being empathic.
If i was NQ, i see the active players i would cry and lose ambition to work for those whining, ungrateful but paying customers.
Even if you listen to suggestions, deviate from the plan and the initial vision to fulfill stupid suggestions that were never planned,

work your ass of to implement many of those things into a game where the players were intend to create the content.
Dosnt it feel like a waste of time, when the community is whining even louder after you devided from the plan to just implement the tools for the players and not the content?
Well if i were NQ i would think about ever listening to this ungrateful community again and try to finish the project as soon as possible without breaking too many promisses.
I would tell the community to not being that negative and tell NQ not just where they failed, but also where they have done something good.
But hey i allways try to be empathic, im not a fanboy...
Well... i lied, im a Fanboy after all 😜

 

Jokes aside, let us remind NQ why we wanted this game, why they wanted to fulfill this vision and let them DU theyre job...
And lets DU our job.
Both sides are the reason if DU will be unsuccessful. Not just NQ, but also the Comunity.
We in Germany have a saying
Sweep in front of your own door
or
Grab your own nose
Means befor critizising others, check if you cannot do it better, or
If you rely on others, then you are abandoned. So you have to do your job first

 

First, branding all complaints as "whining" is showcasing a one-sided empathy...toward the poor company who is setting out to make a profit by selling us a product. 

 

Second, this idea that the game will fail because the community didn't do their part is puzzling. Our part is to pay hard-earned money to the company in exchange for a product. We pay them a fee every single month and in return we get to play the game.

 

And it is a game. It isn't a "parallel" world and this belief that it was ever going to be that is misguided.

 

It was advertised as a game, presented as a game, and developed as a game. It was never a metaverse and it was never going to be, no matter what you think the Kickstarter said. 

 

This idea that you don't have a right to complain if you can't do it better yourself...well, that must be a cultural thing because I strongly disagree with that sentiment.

 

This is very obviously a commercial arrangement -- NQ wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it takes to make even at the expense of their players, so let's not pretend that this is anything but a commercial relationship.

 

No one owes NQ "loyalty". If this was a free or open source project? Okay, then I'd agree -- grab your own nose or whatever. But we're the ones paying. We're the customers. If it is our "job" to help NQ, then they ought to be the ones paying us. 

 

All this negative feedback is for NQ's benefit...telling them to keep on doing the same thing will only spell doom when it's time to release. 

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29 minutes ago, CousinSal said:

 

I'm empathic but guess what, if I fail at my job I get FIRED. It's the way the world works. Just because a company exists doesn't free it from criticism or responsibility.  NQ has failed and that's the reality so yes some people will lose their jobs after the servers shut down when "launch" fails to generate a sustainable player base. That's life we live then we die and companies form then they die.

 

21 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

First, branding all complaints as "whining" is showcasing a one-sided empathy...toward the poor company who is setting out to make a profit by selling us a product. 

 

Second, this idea that the game will fail because the community didn't do their part is puzzling. Our part is to pay hard-earned money to the company in exchange for a product. We pay them a fee every single month and in return we get to play the game.

 

And it is a game. It isn't a "parallel" world and this belief that it was ever going to be that is misguided.

 

It was advertised as a game, presented as a game, and developed as a game. It was never a metaverse and it was never going to be, no matter what you think the Kickstarter said. 

 

This idea that you don't have a right to complain if you can't do it better yourself...well, that must be a cultural thing because I strongly disagree with that sentiment.

 

This is very obviously a commercial arrangement -- NQ wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it takes to make even at the expense of their players, so let's not pretend that this is anything but a commercial relationship.

 

No one owes NQ "loyalty". If this was a free or open source project? Okay, then I'd agree -- grab your own nose or whatever. But we're the ones paying. We're the customers. If it is our "job" to help NQ, then they ought to be the ones paying us. 

 

All this negative feedback is for NQ's benefit...telling them to keep on doing the same thing will only spell doom when it's time to release. 


First... you havnt payed the devs yet.
the monthly fee is to keep the servers up and running.
The devs are getting payed, but also follow theyr own path as promissed in the kickstarter campaign.
im not just emphatic to the devs, but also to the community. Exactly that was the initial reason for "A Letter to the devs"
I see many unneccessary complaints about things where NQ never was responsible for.
And even those complaints have been heard and suggestions have been fulfilled.
Suggestions NQ never was responsible to implement into the game and they did it to remove some of the complaints.
And as thank they get even more complaints.
They promissed to give the players the tools to build theyr own gameworld, quests, activitys and fun.
The players delivered for a long timeperiod.
But there happned some things. First new players who didnt share the vision and wanted to be entertained without doing something against it and NQ is now the bad, because some players have no fun with the toolbox NQ made for us? Players who complain about things NQ never was responsible for?
As long as NQ are able to fulfill the initial vision from the kickstarter years ago, im fine with them.
As long as the servers stay online and enough players are paying for them, im totally fine.
And if NQ decide to release the game as soon as all promissed features are implemented im also fine.
Could you please stop complaining for a while and just playing pls?
Just DU it!

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1 hour ago, BiGEdge said:

First... you havnt payed the devs yet.
the monthly fee is to keep the servers up and running.

 

Backers and subscribers alike have paid NQ for a service and that service includes devs who maintain and expand the game.

Please stop being silly, you sound like a fanboi with his message on repeat (which you are entiitled to be if that is thecase).. 

 

 

People are frustrated, they are annoyed and unhappy. NQ's actions and choices are not exactly doing (or saying) much to alleviate that.

Just like you have the rightg to be the everlasting optimist, ignoring all things not fitting that narrative, so do others havethe right to recognize the issue and bring them front and center in a thread started as a "letter to the devs". Both letters  are valid as both are based on opinion, emotion, passion (yes, I do say passion here) and desire for the game to get good.

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1 hour ago, BiGEdge said:

First... you havnt payed the devs yet.
the monthly fee is to keep the servers up and running.

 

I'm not sure what you mean, here. I have paid. The cost per sub is not merely a cost to keep the servers running...I am deeply familiar with how cost and billing works for servers spun up via AWS. Monthly sub per user certainly isn't an option...

 

1 hour ago, BiGEdge said:

Could you please stop complaining for a while and just playing pls?

No? 🤷‍♂️ 

 

I do respect your opinion, but see things very differently.

 

I don't agree NQ is addressing player feedback...nor do I think the issues is with new players that "don't share the vision", nor do I agree that NQ "isn't responsible" for making content when the tools available hardly allow players to really create emergent gameplay.

 

I don't think wanting to be "entertained" by a product marketed, developed, and presented as a video game (MMORPG) is so unreasonable.

 

If they wanted to make a real metaverse, they should have done that. The tools available aren't nearly robust or expansive enough to create all this content you seem to think we players are responsible for. 

 

NQ runs every piece of content that matters right now, not players: the exchange, all alien cores (the only form of TW in existence), all markets, all asteroids, all safe zones, bots, and missions. 

 

All that speaks to a game that isn't a world that's "up to us" to build...it speaks to a sandbox with such limited tools for creating emergent experiences, they had to throw some content together because they knew it wasn't working as a game. And it is a game, not just a "content platform" as they want to insist. Their website is dualuniverse.game, not dualuniverse.kind-of-metaverse.com 

Edited by blundertwink
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2 hours ago, kulkija said:

 

Clearly NQ is not following their vision. And here we are.

 

How many times in history people have said that "it is not possible," Man can not fly, earth is flat, Columbus shall newer go west...

I don't want to say that it would never be feasible. I rather think that the next 10-30years could be the time to create some kind of small "metaverse". In 30-100years I can imagine that there could be a very good metaverse. Provided that we are not in a downward spiral of development as currently indicated.

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7 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

I've worked in dev for like 15 years now (3 in game dev); this is very true. There's an adage that says that brilliant ideas are worth a penny, but brilliant ideas with an implementation are worth a fortune. 

 

I agree that the potential for DU as a concept was always too optimistic.

I think even an implementation is not enough.  Software development is a process which goes on for the life of the product.  That process involves making something people want to use (which is harder than the idea as you say)  putting it into their hands and getting them to use it (which is harder than just making the thing), then looking at them using it and using that knowledge to make a better thing, replacing what you made, getting more people to use it and iterating.

 

It doesn't matter how optimistic the final product is.  In fact I'd argue that the optimistic vision of what DU could one day be is a big part of why we are here at all rather than in some other game.  It's therefore a useful part of the iteration loop.

 

You mention Twitter, and Twitter did scale badly for years (IIRC it had a postgres in the middle?).  But quickly they made a thing people wanted to use.  When people used it they gained knowledge and used that to make a better twitter and get more users, iterating to the point where scalability was a 'nice problem to have'.

 

For DU I'd argue that there is an end goal, and they have produced working implementations, but they forgot to listen to what the players want and make a better thing.  Instead we got a combination of hits and misses as they made what they want to make for their own reasons instead of making what the players want in order to grow the user base.  The result of this broken iteration is a game which loses more players than it gains over time and this in turn reduces feedback, reducing the quality of future iterations.

 

What is really valuable is an idea with an implementation *which is being used by a lot of people* because it shows a company can execute properly.

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8 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

 

I'd say many still share the initial vision. And many also unerstand that a vision is just that and from there one needs to adjust and shape the vision to what is achievable.

 

 

NQ (in the form of JC) kept dreaming that their utopia was going to become reality. until reality came knocking at which time it was too late and NQ has been firefighting ans scrambling to just get to a release of some kind.

Unfortunately NQ has never really engaged what is probably their most valuable ally and asset in developing DU, their community. They just kept dreaming up overcomplicated ideas to "fix" other overcomplicated or over reaching ideas. This community has stood up and offered valueble suggestions/iodeas/feedback throughout he years but most has been ignored and much forgotten as the players who provided it have long since moved on.

 

 

So what happened you ask? NQ happened is what..

DU still has the potential it had back then and could still work out. But NQ is not the company to do it I believe. they lack the vision and (financial) resources to really make that push and make it fast enough.

It must be hard to be NQ though when it comes to feedback because there are so many different types of players with contradictory ideas.  This was a core part of the original  vision after all!

 

Look at the main forum page.  I can see a thread which says there should be no PvP and another suggesting taking away all the safe zones.

 

The fact that loads of different player types can play different games together is one of the things I love about the original vision.  It's one of the things that gave eve a very long life.

 

But the skill here is listening to all of the feedback, balancing all the different wants and needs and making something which appeals to everyone.  At the moment we get a mix of great things which do this (asteroids, missions for example) and things which everyone hates (schematics when announced, construct limits and territory taxes) combined with things which undermine past gains (mining units undoing the gains from asteroids, failure to iterate fast in missions breaking the economy, wipe talk drivignaway users, etc).

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5 hours ago, BiGEdge said:


More market interaction - they implemented Schematics and it worked as intended
Easier Tools for Voxelmancy - they implemented the Vertex precision tool
Activitys for PVP and PVE - they implemented Shipwrecks and Alien Stations for PVP
Just three suggestions that came from the community and have been implemented.
NQs time is limited, but ive never heard from NQ that the budget is yet. So i have faith in them, they will save the economy and implement planetary PVP befor the release.
I have faith that they get the games economy running without a wipe that will kill the game entirely.
 

 

I have posted many things here and have yet to receive any hint that any of it got read by NQ (except once when a post was censored but I can't remember what I wrote anyway).  Sometimes I wonder if what I said influenced a decision but there's no way of knowing if it even gets read.

 

Schematics definitely did not work as intended.  While each player interacts with the market more now the player count fell so much that the net effect was that the market has never been used as much as it was before the patch.  I used to have 500 orders across 10 districts and sell hundreds of items per day.  9 of the 10 districts are completely dead now and district 6 sells a lot less than before.

 

The vertex tool is nice, but was probably implemented to get rid of complex, uncompressable voxel libraries to save storage costs on the server rather than because of player feedback.

 

Shipwrecks did nothing for PvP.  Alien cores are good in some ways but they are a particular type of organised PvP which is quite niche.  The broken radar made it hard to take advantage of though.  Asteroids and missions were great PvP drivers but mining units and mission nerfs undid these and the net effect is a lot less PvP now than before.

 

I would love you to be right about the wipe but looking at recent actions and NQ behaviour in general it is hard to avoid concluding that a wipe is already certain. 

 

And the number of people asking for unrealistic things before release like atmo PvP and pets really worries me.  You must surely realise that no e if that is viable in the timeframe.  I think the best we can hope for here is that NQ starts to listen and make positive iterations which increase the user base to the point where they can grow and be able to do some of these things.

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42 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

It must be hard to be NQ though when it comes to feedback because there are so many different types of players with contradictory ideas. 

 

While true, the trick is to pick what fits your vision/ideas and accept you may loose the rest. If you follow that thought, in general you end up with a good number of people who you can provide a good experience to which is better than trying to please as many as possible and in the process never really doing anyone much good.

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1 hour ago, Jake Arver said:

 

While true, the trick is to pick what fits your vision/ideas and accept you may loose the rest. If you follow that thought, in general you end up with a good number of people who you can provide a good experience to which is better than trying to please as many as possible and in the process never really doing anyone much good.

And thats what leads us back to the conclusion, NQ should stick to the initial vision of the game.
This alone brings all the players who initially backed for the game.
NQ should not listen too much on player feedback that dosnt fit that initial plan and vision.

Well then NQ is doing everything right most of the times, right?
They should change the things in the game that made them lose those players, like the schematics system that made a lot of backers quit.
Well they do, right now.
But will it bring back the players who share the vision? Well we we will see.
NQ should fix the markets and give the game back a wealthy economy just by implementing a full economy cycle.
No wipe will bring back players, but will lose the rest of the ambitiouns players had to make the game having content.

Players who spend a lot of time and effort to create content for other players. That was the essence to bring DU to life in the first place of the vision.
If a wipe comes, the game will keep all the new players who dont even know or respect the initial vision and lose most of the players who worked to fulfill it.
And the worst, a wipe will not help to fix the economy nor it makes the game even better and all the great player made content could be gone.
Well then it gets very hard and expensive to bring DU back to life.
NQ should do anything to bring as many longtime players to DU as they can and ignore most of the complaints and hate.
How would you decide?
Is it really that bad that NQ is not really listening on playerfeedback that much?
Do you think NQ is allways listening to the wrong suggestions and feedback?
You can allways do something wrong when listening to much on most of the stuff people expect from DU...

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1 hour ago, BiGEdge said:

And thats what leads us back to the conclusion, NQ should stick to the initial vision of the game.
This alone brings all the players who initially backed for the game.
NQ should not listen too much on player feedback that dosnt fit that initial plan and vision.

 

IMO that's not a very smart way to do software development at all.  You need to look at what the people who are actually using the product want.  Looking at what the original backers want is, of course, relevant but many of them backed the product something like 7 years ago and may not have played the beta at all.  Some of them might not even play video games any more.  DU needs a lot more players than there were original backers and if NQ just ignores what the players want and just present the original version, unaltered, regardless of the opinions of the actual player base then it might be a very short-lived game, and that's not good for anyone.  Even the original backers might not like the original game when actually presented with it.

 

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2 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

IMO that's not a very smart way to do software development at all.  You need to look at what the people who are actually using the product want.  Looking at what the original backers want is, of course, relevant but many of them backed the product something like 7 years ago and may not have played the beta at all.  Some of them might not even play video games any more.  DU needs a lot more players than there were original backers and if NQ just ignores what the players want and just present the original version, unaltered, regardless of the opinions of the actual player base then it might be a very short-lived game, and that's not good for anyone.  Even the original backers might not like the original game when actually presented with it.

 

Well the Kickstarter campaign for DU was 2016, so NQ is gathering mones since about 6 years.
Beta startet 2 years ago. Thats all an acceptable timespan for software development.
After 7-8 Years a game should be finished and released if everything goes as planned.
For Example SC started theyre Kickstarter campaign in 2012. This is double the time now.
10 Years is really not an acceptable timespan for software development.
DU and SC had the same problems with founding a new gamedev studio and the same struggle with player loss at times.

But SC has the much better and lot more expensive marketing to gather players.
DU on the other hand is a lot cheaper to play it.
Yes i know the games themself are not comparable, but the development is indeed.
And i still like the style of development NQ shows a lot more... probably its really a cultural thing.
Money was never the main goal in developing DU, but always making a dream sandbox where all players around the world can build a zivilisation in just one virtual single shard universe.
And if you ask me NQ made it possible, but rather the demand for a technology or virtual world like this is missing after a few years or NQ are just bad in advertising theyr product.
But why should you advertise an unfinished product when you havnt finished developing it?
You dont need to, at least if you dont need the Money...
Im pretty sure NQ doesnt need Money to finish DU... if they would, they would advertise theyre product a lot more...

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4 hours ago, BiGEdge said:

And thats what leads us back to the conclusion, NQ should stick to the initial vision of the game.

Yes and no. the initial vision was overly ambitious and techncally not viable. In that respect NQ should have adjusted once tat became apparent. You can push to find new ways to still realize what you set out to do, but once clear this is beyond what is possible you need to refocus to what you can do.. 

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16 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

As always, you are entitled to your opinion ..

So... 'Others' are right and I have an 'opinion'? 😉

Let's be clear, most of the commenters here have zero experience in (MMO) game development, programming, business, etc. Most are no more then armchair generals that are mostly spouting what they want to see. Those people that are 'right' is your opinion, nothing more.

 

We all might need to accept that the initial premise of DU was flawed, and now 8 years later no longer has a sustainable place in the current MMO landscape... 8 years ago Wildstar was released as the WoW 'killer', we all know how that turned out...

 

I'm not saying that there have been no good ideas, but that doesn't mean that they would magically fix DU or are even feasible to implement.

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4 hours ago, Cergorach said:

We all might need to accept that the initial premise of DU was flawed, and now 8 years later no longer has a sustainable place in the current MMO landscape...

 

The initial premise was deeply flawed...an open world sandbox MMO where you can PvP and also make factories or create content via Lua...that's like 3-4 games in one. Simple "theme park" MMOs often have 10x NQ's budget. There's a line between ambition and hubris and DU was always beyond that line. 

 

People believed that they could do it because NQ claimed they had cutting edge tech, some new algorithm or infra that would make voxels-at-scale somehow work in a cost-effective way. Of course, this wasn't true. 

 

I'm very critical, but I do understand how impossible NQ's initial vision was. 

 

Compromises to the "initial vision" were inevitable because that was a rambling pipe dream conjured up by someone with zero experience in game dev and little experience in commercial software development in general...

 

However, compromises still need a design clarity and to work toward making the game more engaging. In the past few years, that clarity has been shown to be severely lacking. 

 

This idea that they merely need to "stick to the initial vision" is really puzzling to me...how are they supposed to magically solve the problems inherent in that vision? Not with cutting edge tech that doesn't exist. Not with infra scale they can't pay for. Not with time they don't have. 

 

This idea that NQ is merely following the wrong suggestions is equally odd. We know that many recent design changes are driven by cost and scale because they've been clear that this is a motivation. They have agency. You can't give them credit for all the things you like about the game, but then blame everything else on them "following the wrong advice". 

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8 hours ago, BiGEdge said:

Well the Kickstarter campaign for DU was 2016, so NQ is gathering mones since about 6 years.
Beta startet 2 years ago. Thats all an acceptable timespan for software development.
After 7-8 Years a game should be finished and released if everything goes as planned.
For Example SC started theyre Kickstarter campaign in 2012. This is double the time now.
10 Years is really not an acceptable timespan for software development.
DU and SC had the same problems with founding a new gamedev studio and the same struggle with player loss at times.

But SC has the much better and lot more expensive marketing to gather players.
DU on the other hand is a lot cheaper to play it.
Yes i know the games themself are not comparable, but the development is indeed.
And i still like the style of development NQ shows a lot more... probably its really a cultural thing.
Money was never the main goal in developing DU, but always making a dream sandbox where all players around the world can build a zivilisation in just one virtual single shard universe.
And if you ask me NQ made it possible, but rather the demand for a technology or virtual world like this is missing after a few years or NQ are just bad in advertising theyr product.
But why should you advertise an unfinished product when you havnt finished developing it?
You dont need to, at least if you dont need the Money...
Im pretty sure NQ doesnt need Money to finish DU... if they would, they would advertise theyre product a lot more...

Yes, but the kickstarter money is gone.  You didn't get what you were hoping for.  But kickstarters are all a bit of a punt anyway and at least you actually got something playable.

 

We need to move on to what works, what is achievable and what is fun.  Nobody cares what JC wanted to do 6 years ago even if we all wish that was the game that got made.  It isn't.  And you can't magic up the game you wanted because the money is spent now.

 

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26 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Yes, but the kickstarter money is gone.

 

People do realize that Kickstarter barely raised any money for DU, right...? They raised €565k with their KS (about $649k USD at 2016 exchange rates). 

 

The VCs provided actual money (over $20 million) -- the thought of trying to develop an MMO of this ambition with only the KS backers is a bit hilarious.


With a bit over $21 million in funding total, that means the KS backers only provided about 3.1 percent of the total funding. That's before Kickstarter's 5% fee and other processing-related fees, so really it's even less. 

 

Point being, KS backers didn't fund this game. 

 

So...if you think NQ owes you something for "backing them" or they've "broken KS promises", just keep in mind how important KS actually was. It likely helped them get the attention of investors with actual money, but it isn't like the KS backers paid for much of anything to the point where NQ "owes" them anything in terms of "sticking to what was promised". 

Edited by blundertwink
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15 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

People do realize that Kickstarter barely raised any money for DU, right...? They raised €565k with their KS (about $649k USD at 2016 exchange rates). 

 

Wow, I didn't know it was that small.  That's what, 10 people employed for 1 year with no equipment at best?  What did people expect to be able to get done with so little money?

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3 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Wow, I didn't know it was that small.  That's what, 10 people employed for 1 year with no equipment at best?  What did people expect to be able to get done with so little money?

 

Many times these Kick starter rounds are done to demonstrate to investors that there is customers who are willing to pay.

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33 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

Wow, I didn't know it was that small.  That's what, 10 people employed for 1 year with no equipment at best?  What did people expect to be able to get done with so little money?

 

10 highly underpaid devs, anyway...otherwise that's only 3-4 mid-to-senior devs at best 😁

 

31 minutes ago, kulkija said:

 

Many times these Kick starter rounds are done to demonstrate to investors that there is customers who are willing to pay.

 

I don't disagree, but I still don't understand how NQ got these investments -- except for rumors that JC was friends with Nicolas Granatino.

 

It's a huge, huge risk to throw money at a CEO with zero revenue, no product, and no experience in the field at all...even if the Kickstarter was a "big" success. So in a lot of ways, it's amazing that the game has gotten this far or even had a chance to be made, even if the outcome hasn't been anything close to ideal. 

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17 hours ago, BiGEdge said:

Well the Kickstarter campaign for DU was 2016, so NQ is gathering mones since about 6 years.
Beta startet 2 years ago. Thats all an acceptable timespan for software development.
After 7-8 Years a game should be finished and released if everything goes as planned.

 

NQ said they's expect to havethe game doe in 2018, then 2020, thwn 2021, then 2022

NQ has not been "gathering mony since 6 years, they have had funding of about 24Million between 2014 when the company was foudned and 2019 when the last investor round was paid. The 2.5 million they got from Kickstarter was spent the moment they received that money.

 

DU has effectively been in devlopment for coming up on 8 years now and is barely able to hold an Alpha stage label. Not saying that in itself that is a bad thing for a cmplex game like this, but what for me is not great is a dev pretending they are ready for release of a game in this state. 

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On 7/13/2022 at 8:25 PM, CousinSal said:

People keep saying DU has potential but does it? Did it ever? Or was it just some half baked idea. Then combine that with a company unable to execute and seemingly makes the wrong decision at every turn. DU really never had a chance. 

 

DU had a chance with right chain of priorities from early stages of development.

 

Best shot was much more political-social game, where interaction of player-made entities were main thing. Like EVE with 1st person, even with all limitations and trade-offs.

 

Yet NQ chosen to make it some some sort of half-assed building/grinding/flying_for_long_time game. This unlikely have any long run chance to survive. Simply too little of semi-solo nerds interested in building some crap 1000 hours from voxels or play 2000 hours with industry sitting alone on empty planet. Its not even niche, its like deep hole in niche.

 

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On 7/14/2022 at 6:56 AM, Jake Arver said:

Yes and no. the initial vision was overly ambitious and techncally not viable. In that respect NQ should have adjusted once tat became apparent. You can push to find new ways to still realize what you set out to do, but once clear this is beyond what is possible you need to refocus to what you can do.. 

 

Sorry to say but i have seen space engeneer servers that are closer to the original DU vision as DU is itself, and those i did not invest a few hundred in. 

At the moment the server tech failed we got the first limitations and that has not stopped since. Simply said, we will never get the vision since it costs money and will not make money at this moment. It feels like any progress on server tech was halted and the fresh wind is called limitations we try to sell as game features to enhance something else!!Yoehoe!!!

 

So yes, i still believe in the vision but to be honest, the current approach of NQ does not walk that path, it follows a demolition derby strategy on route to lowest costs

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