GRIEF LAUNCH: Stealth Nerfs, Poor Comms and Missteps Rooted in a Lack of Vision

[Megabosslord]

Let's set aside for a moment that wiping beta player constructs at launch was always unfair, given past commitments. NQ have now heaped insult on injury with a number of stealth nerfs at launch:

 

Alioth T2 Distribution: 

I did 80 territory scans on Alioth at a ~3 tile spacing and found zero T2. None at all. Zip. Nada. No T2 - after spending 3 days building the XL assembler and scanner. This is a broken gameplay loop. Combined with the removal of Malachite from Alioth, the stealth nerf of ore distribution on Alioth resulted in a week of wasted effort. Forcing effort with no payoff is not gameplay. 

 

If NQ had been transparent with us before launch, said they were going to nerf T2 on Alioth, I wouldn't have wasted that critical week. I would also have rebuilt my base before launch so the BP wasn't made of 500,000M3 of Copper. Now, to deploy my BP I have to swap copper for another honeycomb, and then go back and untangle where the new material has blended with the same material already in the BP. More rework, on top of the wasted time.

 

1000m Build Height: 

This was self-evidently dumb. By choosing a 1000m cap instead of 1128m, it's impossible to build a 1000m AGG pad without placing your foundation core at an exactly multiple of 128m (since you won't be able to place the top core if there is less than a 128m gap.) Even then, you can put nothing on your 1000m pad, no elements, no structure. And you have to either use smaller cores for your top layer (increasing server load) or build your base from the top core, down - which means tall temporary scaffold structures first to place top cores and work back down - while others complain about griefing the entire time. 

 

A large number of pre-launch bases had AGG pads at or slightly above 1000m. All these pre-launch base BPs are now bricked.

 

This misstep demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of their game's own mechanics by devs, and poor understandng of players. To make matters worse, the change wasn't even included in patch notes. The only place it was mentioned - just wks before launch - was in 'Ask Aphelia #12. Few players had any opportunity to fix their builds before launch. This mistake (1000m vs 1128m) would easily have been picked up if players had been warned.

 

In summary, not only did NQ reneg on prior commitments to honour our builds in their 'persistent' universe - the only compensation being retained blueprints - they went on to stealth nerf the BPs we kept. 

 

[EDIT: Because this rule is not yet being enforced, and it is still possible to place a core above 1000m, this will create even more pain for players uncertain or unaware of the rule - should NQ decide to delete structures after they are built. And for as long as the rule is unclear, it is impossible to safely place the foundations of a tall structure.]

 

 

Missing STUs for 'Contributors' (and Surface Natron):

By making Sanctuary the only place with surface natron near Alioth, Alpha contributors already had a significant advantage at launch - since natron is needed to make many popular elements: screens, lights etc.. NQ then messed up further, by jacking up the distribution of STUs meaning only some Contributors received them. ~10 days later, this still has not been fixed. This means a small number of players, purely by chance, have the only access to surface natron near Alioth.

 

HTML/SVG nerf and Indiscriminate LUA Changes: 

The disabling of HTML screens was long rumoured, but took so long to be done it appeared to have been abandoned. Waiting till launch to tell players all SVGs and HTML are also now bricked is also poor form and counter-productive. Because a large number of ship BPs from pre-launch contain screens using HTML, and virtually every factory monitoring set-up, any player flying these ships or running these factories, will now simply go to settings and re-enable HTML, to be able to play the game - undermining the point of the exercise to phase out HTML, and prolonging the inevitable pain and frustration when it is finally done. This pain is now unavoidable given the original misstep of building a new API with zero compatibility with HTML/SVG. (The new API should always have been implemented in a way to minimise the effort of reworking existing content for players - rather than forcing ground up rebuilds of all screens. Better still, existing content should ideally have been ported on behalf of players.)

 

Combine this with the frivolous renaming of a number of LUA cmds, additional rework has also been created for players to reimplement scripts written before launch - for no apparent reason. 

 

STILL No Static BP Placement Snapping!: 

We asked for this in the Alpha Trello 3 yrs ago. It was poorly implemented on day one - snapping new cores only. Hundreds of players have asked for it to be fixed for static BPs over the years. It never made sense that new cores snap into place, but static BPs work of a bizarre raycast that doesn't even align with the player camera and - annoyingly - nudges by 2 voxels instead of 1. This feature was already long overdue, but now made more critical since it is essential to redeploying any mult-core construct after the wipe. Finally... finally, it was coming! In the launch livestream it was promised for launch here, at timecode 35:38:

 

Instead, we now learn this was skipped, rendering all multi-core static construct blueprints useless. 

 

Summary:

 

- Forcing players to constantly rework their builds is not gameplay.

- Reworking existing content is a poor proxy for new gameplay loops.

- Player input is invaluable. 

- Last minute, uncommunicated changes rarely if ever have a positive outcome.  

 

The culture at NQ of disregarding the time and effort of players, and lack of consideration of impacts on our gameplay, is worrisome. More worrisome, is the tendency to continuously rework existing content - mechanics, terrain, boolean noise - rather than develop significant new features, many of these features requested years ago. NQ are still missing the winning strategy of successful 'player generated content' franchises like Minecraft, where the focus of the first several years was on adding new gameplay loops - as opposed to continuously reworking existing ones. Reworking existing content decays player satisfaction by forcing the constant rework of our own builds. And making changes by stealth only magnifies the problem.

 

Until this is understood, the future of this franchise is fraught. 

[Kurock]

Some minor points or additions to the above:

 

STU’s are becoming less useful with each passing day. They were an advantage in the beginning to help get started but as players/orgs get onto asteroids etc their value plummets. Ores are now readily available on the markets. Not having an STU when promised one (or more) during the second week after launch is very sad. NQ dropped the ball on this one so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if the ball entered orbit on the rebound.

 

The max build height is a number they can should be able to easily change. But I agree with the points that many of the changes NQ makes do not seem to be made by anyone that actually plays the game. A difference of 128m here shows that clearly. Beta saw the proliferation of space elevators which NQ decided to stop by putting in a height limit. Crashing into towers is never fun and a space elevator works just as well without the shaft. Or is it that Aphelia doesn’t want anything taller than the arkship? 

 

The problem with scanning on Alioth is that Alioth is big. Mind numbingly big. And there is not much variety in the ores to be found and the distribution is quite uniform. There are patches of T2 spanning 10km or more from end to end. Making 3km hops while looking for T2 is counter productive. For T3 however, it is about right. What this boils down to is bad luck.

 

The HTML was always going to be disabled... but there is a setting to re-enable it. Click checkbox in settings and it’s back. The Lua refactoring is always a pain but they usually deprecate instead of outright deleting old functions. If something was outright removed (even a rename is a removal) then they broke scripts which should not have happened and seems like a hug to me.

 

In summary, NQ where my STU?

[Msoul]

This appears to be more of a rant than actual feedback. Furthermore it contains numerous instances of slander towards the developers. Based on this I can only conclude that your target audience was not NQ but the playerbase. Why then address the playerbase in this manner? From my perspective, this appears to be a blatant attempt to get the community to riot. I do hope that was not the intention here but if you were trying to strong arm NQ into addressing your personal list of gripes by riling up the community then I am truly disappointed.

 

With that said, here are my brief comments on the major points of your post: 

1. Your verdict on the T2 distribution on Alioth is premature and your belief that changes to the resource distribution should be made public is not one that I share. In fact I think the devs already reached a fair compromise when they decided to list the ores available on each planet/moon as opposed to leaving it to the playerbase to discover. 
2. Antigrav generators were designed with the 1km altitude restriction to limit their effectiveness. The AGG towers were a player made solution to mitigate this downside not an intended gameplay mechanic. Regardless, the only thing NQ has said is that the 1000m limit is a thing now. The exact details have not been uncovered by players. For all we know the limit could be referenced from the tallest point of natural terrain or maybe it even varies in value from planet to planet. This is still the age of discovery and some brave pioneer needs to climb up there and check. If it turns out that AGG towers are no longer viable then politely raise the issue so the devs are aware and can decide whether or not they want to correct it. Also keep in mind that this a bit of a controversial topic as not everyone is fond of the AGG towers. 
3. The missing STUs was an unforeseen issue and is being investigated.
4. HTML screens being phased out was officially announced on numerous occasions prior to launch and was even part of the PTS release candidate. Also as Kurock pointed out, there is an option under your game settings to re-enable said feature for those who have still not mitigated to the new system.
5. The devs already provided advanced notice that blueprint snapping was going to be included in a future update after the launch. 

There is nothing wrong with airing your complaints but if you want to actually help improve the game then I strongly recommend dropping the tone and instead providing constructive feedback with actual suggestions for improvement. This will encourage others to do the same and the subsequent interactions will transform ideas into effective solutions.

[Aaron Cain]

1 hour ago, Msoul said:

This appears to be more of a rant than actual feedback. Furthermore it contains numerous instances of slander towards the developers. Based on this I can only conclude that your target audience was not NQ but the playerbase. Why then address the playerbase in this manner? From my perspective, this appears to be a blatant attempt to get the community to riot. I do hope that was not the intention here but if you were trying to strong arm NQ into addressing your personal list of gripes by riling up the community then I am truly disappointed.

 

With that said, here are my brief comments on the major points of your post: 

1. Your verdict on the T2 distribution on Alioth is premature and your belief that changes to the resource distribution should be made public is not one that I share. In fact I think the devs already reached a fair compromise when they decided to list the ores available on each planet/moon as opposed to leaving it to the playerbase to discover. 
2. Antigrav generators were designed with the 1km altitude restriction to limit their effectiveness. The AGG towers were a player made solution to mitigate this downside not an intended gameplay mechanic. Regardless, the only thing NQ has said is that the 1000m limit is a thing now. The exact details have not been uncovered by players. For all we know the limit could be referenced from the tallest point of natural terrain or maybe it even varies in value from planet to planet. This is still the age of discovery and some brave pioneer needs to climb up there and check. If it turns out that AGG towers are no longer viable then politely raise the issue so the devs are aware and can decide whether or not they want to correct it. Also keep in mind that this a bit of a controversial topic as not everyone is fond of the AGG towers. 
3. The missing STUs was an unforeseen issue and is being investigated.
4. HTML screens being phased out was officially announced on numerous occasions prior to launch and was even part of the PTS release candidate. Also as Kurock pointed out, there is an option under your game settings to re-enable said feature for those who have still not mitigated to the new system.
5. The devs already provided advanced notice that blueprint snapping was going to be included in a future update after the launch. 

There is nothing wrong with airing your complaints but if you want to actually help improve the game then I strongly recommend dropping the tone and instead providing constructive feedback with actual suggestions for improvement. This will encourage others to do the same and the subsequent interactions will transform ideas into effective solutions.

 

Ok, so ill try to be a critic constructive here

 

This reaction is one i would expect from a developer and not someone from the community. It is good to defend NQ but please let them do that themselves.

 

1. lets just explore this ourselves.

 

2. hate those towers but i hate limitations even more, so please stop limitations period!

 

3. Too little too late, investigation of dac that could cost NQ self cash was somewhat more empowered. If they wanted to tackle the issue All STU deployement was halted on day one.

I am missing STU too although i do have them on my main account. All these days of investigation might give the idea something is wrong with the database that saves gifted out stuff.

Else why could this not be fixed in the same time as the dac's

 

4 lag city, nuff said

 

5. Too little Too late.

Dont promote a feature and then cancel it for some time. Its equal to telling your kids they will get an icecream and then when they ask for it after waiting for 5 minutes you just tell them, well probably next year.

 

And about actually trying to help the game, where is trello?  Where is the community page? What was ever done with the ideas on the ideas channel? How do limitations and decisions based on server load help emerging gameplay?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Megabosslord]

4 hours ago, Msoul said:

This appears to be more of a rant than actual feedback. Furthermore it contains numerous instances of slander towards the developers. Based on this I can only conclude that your target audience was not NQ but the playerbase. Why then address the playerbase in this manner? From my perspective, this appears to be a blatant attempt to get the community to riot. I do hope that was not the intention here but if you were trying to strong arm NQ into addressing your personal list of gripes by riling up the community then I am truly disappointed.

 

With that said, here are my brief comments on the major points of your post: 

1. Your verdict on the T2 distribution on Alioth is premature and your belief that changes to the resource distribution should be made public is not one that I share. In fact I think the devs already reached a fair compromise when they decided to list the ores available on each planet/moon as opposed to leaving it to the playerbase to discover. 
2. Antigrav generators were designed with the 1km altitude restriction to limit their effectiveness. The AGG towers were a player made solution to mitigate this downside not an intended gameplay mechanic. Regardless, the only thing NQ has said is that the 1000m limit is a thing now. The exact details have not been uncovered by players. For all we know the limit could be referenced from the tallest point of natural terrain or maybe it even varies in value from planet to planet. This is still the age of discovery and some brave pioneer needs to climb up there and check. If it turns out that AGG towers are no longer viable then politely raise the issue so the devs are aware and can decide whether or not they want to correct it. Also keep in mind that this a bit of a controversial topic as not everyone is fond of the AGG towers. 
3. The missing STUs was an unforeseen issue and is being investigated.
4. HTML screens being phased out was officially announced on numerous occasions prior to launch and was even part of the PTS release candidate. Also as Kurock pointed out, there is an option under your game settings to re-enable said feature for those who have still not mitigated to the new system.
5. The devs already provided advanced notice that blueprint snapping was going to be included in a future update after the launch. 

There is nothing wrong with airing your complaints but if you want to actually help improve the game then I strongly recommend dropping the tone and instead providing constructive feedback with actual suggestions for improvement. This will encourage others to do the same and the subsequent interactions will transform ideas into effective solutions.

 

You missed the point on most of this. 

- Removing Malachite from Alioth (leaving scant T2) isn’t a ‘belief’. 
 

- Bricking AGG platforms, if intentional,  is even more a stealth nerf.
 

- It doesn’t take 2 wks to figure out who your contributors are and whether they got their STU. 

 

- Read it again. Forcing players to go re-enable HTML in settings solves nothing. 

- Exactly. They said it would be done for launch, took our money, then kicked it down the road. Your point?

 

As for the audience for this post, I’d love to think devs actually listen but 3 yrs of evidence now suggests otherwise.
 

There are several things here most players won’t have discovered yet, and in the absence of clear comms from NQ, no comprehensive change logs, information scattered across a variety of streams, I’m trying to save fellow players from wasting days making the same disappointing discoveries. 

[GraXXoR]

4 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

 

Ok, so ill try to be a critic constructive here

 

This reaction is one i would expect from a developer and not someone from the community. It is good to defend NQ but please let them do that themselves.

 

 

It's msoul, so this is expected. Really not worth replying with more than a single line.

[Daphne Jones]

Yep. NQ managed to FUBAR and SNAFU in the same release. Good job.

 

Not only do I not have my STU, but they haven't even acknowledged the two tickets I've filed about it. Maybe I should start filing a new ticket every hour until they do.

[Promulgator]

Accurate.

Not to mention; no FPS or atmospheric combat ... no VOIP ... breaking the economy by selling all of the basic parts so nobody needs to craft them, buying ore, and selling super OP ships at the beginning ....

[Hecticus]

13 hours ago, Megabosslord said:

 

There are several things here most players won’t have discovered yet, and in the absence of clear comms from NQ, no comprehensive change logs, information scattered across a variety of streams, I’m trying to save fellow players from wasting days making the same disappointing discoveries. 

As poor a source of information as this forum can be, it’s still what I come here for. Thanks for the info. It is useful.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Hecticus
Typing is hard

[Megabosslord]

On 10/10/2022 at 2:02 PM, Daphne Jones said:

Yep. NQ managed to FUBAR and SNAFU in the same release. Good job.

 

Not only do I not have my STU, but they haven't even acknowledged the two tickets I've filed about it. Maybe I should start filing a new ticket every hour until they do.

It doesn't take 2 weeks to figure out who got a STU and who didn't, unless they're not really trying.

[Aaron Cain]

Indeed  @NQ-Admin STU When?

 

And to be clear, I already have mine but these missing STU and other missing "gifts" are just symptomic and really hurt part of the community.

This has to be fixed and there is no excuse to have to wait over 2 weeks.

the main reason the value is already lower for these STU is because they are not yet placed, the STU i was able to place provided me with enough materials to be able to craft my first Static L core yesterday, bit slow i know but i am helping out my friends who are less lucky.

 

Just make this a priority instead of a slap in the face of contributors.

 

[GraXXoR]

I think my second account which has  ”supporter” rank  is also lacking a STU. 
at least he was when I stated playing. Haven’t checked his nanopack for a while. 

[Daphne Jones]

8 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

Indeed  @NQ-Admin STU When?

 

 

 

Just make this a priority instead of a slap in the face of contributors.

 

Too late to avoid it being a slap in the face... but I could go for stopping after ten slaps in the face.

 

BTW, I did finally get a response to my ticket on this, but it was just "we're working on it." Too little too late.

[Megabosslord]

On 10/13/2022 at 7:00 AM, Daphne Jones said:

Too late to avoid it being a slap in the face... but I could go for stopping after ten slaps in the face.

 

BTW, I did finally get a response to my ticket on this, but it was just "we're working on it." Too little too late.

3 weeks later, they're still "working on it": https://discord.com/channels/184691218184273920/307084295531659266/1032410850339848193 

[fusion94]

Poor comms is something they could have changed from beta --> launch and they didn't. If anything it's actually worse now.

[OrionSteed]

After taking over from the old regime, I truly feel in my heart of hearts that the current Dev team is doing all they can to improve everything with the staff they have.   We have seen incremental improvements and good changes.  I tip my hat for trying and the progress that's been made since I started.  That being said, my concerns (also as a beta tester) are as follows:

 

(Caveat - Everyone plays differently and these are my personal thoughts only. I may be wrong on my analysis, which I admit ahead of time.  Also, I'm not a mission runner.  I don't find mission running enjoyable.  I've heard it's a good money maker, but it's not what I'm interested in and not what I do.)

 

Mining - The safe zone asteroids are treated like meat to piranhas.  They will be mined out completely within hours, even the T1. You have to discover them in that stage to have a chance, and even then there are 6 to 8 ships on them when you're about to land.  Flying out there only for it to be empty is a huge waste of time and not fun.  With the territory mining so dang expensive to maintain, this is really hard for new players to overcome.  My recommendation is to have even more ore than there is now on these safe zone roids. I get that the higher tier ores you have to venture into the pvp zone or buy it, and that's fine - not asking that to be changed.  Those roids are actually amazing.  Open the T1 and T2 up a bit in the safe zone.  More ore please.

 

Ore Consumption - This will probably be highly debated but to run a standard factory, it takes so much ore! I don't have a complicated set up and I spend over 85% of my time just mining to break even.  It's not fun and that's not what I want to do all the time.  If that's the game play loop for this game, it's dead, and I'm serious.  Now you say "join an org" .  I'm already in an amazing one and I contribute to the mining best I can, and take what I can when it allows.  If it weren't for this group sharing, I'm not sure where I'd be.  If this could be scaled a little bit to provide more product for less ore, I think it'd be a step in the right direction. If you don't believe me on this, just pay attention to the help and general chat in game.

 

Economy - I understand why you went to the schematic system you have now.  However, the fact of the matter is with the economy the way it is, the price of schem's to what you can make and sell is just gross. Remember that we want to keep new players, not drive them away.  I often see elements on the market that are just breaking even on schem cost. No profit for ore.  You're using these fees for schematics and territories to slow everything down, but what's really happening is a grind that's not fun.  The player is under an extreme amount of pressure to make money...just to get by!  Not profit.  My recommendation is to scale back the fees for both schems and territories by a large margin.  If you need to increase time, do that, but the quanta sink is egregious. I played in beta. I knew "how things worked'.  I "recruited" a player, and spent several days and hundreds of text messages just to explain him very basic things that the tutorials didn't explain. He played demo twice but still hasn't went to live yet. I can't convey how behind a non-beta player is just to figure things out.  The learning curve is real.

 

Content - We need more than mining and missions. I'd like to see you work within the constraints of what you have to create some more content.  There's a fine balance between fun and grind.  Right now the grind is egregious.  I just feel like the ore I work so hard to get vaporizes within hours. I could be creating / building / et al but the ore is being used so fast.

 

PvP - How fun is PvP really? Camping pvp asteroids helps no one in the long run. It's not a great game play model.  Plus you have players sitting at the asteroid, then deploying just a core and guns when a miner comes into range.  I can't believe this is what you envisioned for "PvP".  This is shallow and probably not intended anyways.  The alien cores were a good first step, but there could be more. Could there possibly be hot spots that would draw pvp players, with rewards for a winner?  Ship elements perhaps that showed a declared pvp'er where this hotspot was, and best man wins the prize? Rare ore, rare weapons, etc?

 

Many of my org mates and I sit around and talk about how we want this game to succeed. If you add a few more pieces with actual content, you will be successful, I have no doubt of that. We need to see a little more balance and content though, imo.

[sHuRuLuNi]

1 hour ago, OrionSteed said:

......

 

 

 

 

I do get you. It's just it seems everybody else is only interested in numbers and figures (Excel) and not fun.
 

Game loop is this: you mine (grind) to maybe sell ore and make money, or create stuff (elements) and make money.
Then you can mine more and make more money.

 

And that's it.

 

Whoever thinks this is "fun" ought to question his psyche.

 

Also, that people seriously do not see the problem with a SPACE GAME, which has SPACE and PLANETS, but which are completely unnecessary (for the current game loop you do not need any of those) - is beyond me.

 

It is a sad state of affairs when in the forum of a SPACE GAME all topics you can read are as follows:
- "How can I link the machine XY to factory element ABC?"
- "Which Tier of ore is on planet XY?"
- "Do I need an XXL container to haul ore from ABC?"
- "How can I improve refinery efficiency?"

- "Can someone give me the coords to Asteroid ABC which has T3 ore?"
- "How many charges do I need to calibrate the Autominder Tier 69!?"

- "Come take part in this weeks PVP EVENT! SCHEDULED FOR HH:MM" ..... SCHEDULED .... FFS

 

It is indubitably obvious that this game was planned and designed by PROGRAMMERS and NOT GAME DESIGNERS.
These people have NO FREAKING IDEA what entertainment is, what fun is, what a GAME is. No wonder the original Founder has a background in Robotics -- because the bloody game plays as if it was developed by and for robots, and not actual human beings.

 

I can see them when they were planning to create this: "Let's make a SPACE GAME ... And in this game, let's then make a bunch of planets - preferably as bland as possible, and let's make it possible for players to make ships - which they will use to transport ore or maybe steal ore from a poor sap - of course ore, what else is there?, and let's make the players learn a programming language so that they can program stuff and make stuff more EFFICIENT .... mmmm NUMBERRRRRRRRS - that will be fun!"
"But, Sir, people might not find such a game entertaining ... what about NPCs, Quests, Aliens, Lore, A PURPOSE TO ANYTHING?"
"Ah, blablabla ... who cares -- let's put some grand sentences in the game description, like, SPACE EXPLORATION, DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM, NEW CIVILIZATION, BUILDING, VOXELS, MILLIONS OF PLAYERS ON ONE SERVER - how does that sound?"
"I must admit Sir, that sounds superb .... but, none of us is a game designer ... how can we achieve all that?"
"Ahhh, don't worry Jean-Pierre, players will do our job!"
"Sir, you truly are a genius!"
....
 

 

 

[Megabosslord]

11 hours ago, sHuRuLuNi said:

 

 

 

 

I do get you. It's just it seems everybody else is only interested in numbers and figures (Excel) and not fun.
 

Game loop is this: you mine (grind) to maybe sell ore and make money, or create stuff (elements) and make money.
Then you can mine more and make more money.

 

And that's it.

 

Whoever thinks this is "fun" ought to question his psyche.

 

Also, that people seriously do not see the problem with a SPACE GAME, which has SPACE and PLANETS, but which are completely unnecessary (for the current game loop you do not need any of those) - is beyond me.

 

It is a sad state of affairs when in the forum of a SPACE GAME all topics you can read are as follows:
- "How can I link the machine XY to factory element ABC?"
- "Which Tier of ore is on planet XY?"
- "Do I need an XXL container to haul ore from ABC?"
- "How can I improve refinery efficiency?"

- "Can someone give me the coords to Asteroid ABC which has T3 ore?"
- "How many charges do I need to calibrate the Autominder Tier 69!?"

- "Come take part in this weeks PVP EVENT! SCHEDULED FOR HH:MM" ..... SCHEDULED .... FFS

 

It is indubitably obvious that this game was planned and designed by PROGRAMMERS and NOT GAME DESIGNERS.
These people have NO FREAKING IDEA what entertainment is, what fun is, what a GAME is. No wonder the original Founder has a background in Robotics -- because the bloody game plays as if it was developed by and for robots, and not actual human beings.

 

I can see them when they were planning to create this: "Let's make a SPACE GAME ... And in this game, let's then make a bunch of planets - preferably as bland as possible, and let's make it possible for players to make ships - which they will use to transport ore or maybe steal ore from a poor sap - of course ore, what else is there?, and let's make the players learn a programming language so that they can program stuff and make stuff more EFFICIENT .... mmmm NUMBERRRRRRRRS - that will be fun!"
"But, Sir, people might not find such a game entertaining ... what about NPCs, Quests, Aliens, Lore, A PURPOSE TO ANYTHING?"
"Ah, blablabla ... who cares -- let's put some grand sentences in the game description, like, SPACE EXPLORATION, DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM, NEW CIVILIZATION, BUILDING, VOXELS, MILLIONS OF PLAYERS ON ONE SERVER - how does that sound?"
"I must admit Sir, that sounds superb .... but, none of us is a game designer ... how can we achieve all that?"
"Ahhh, don't worry Jean-Pierre, players will do our job!"
"Sir, you truly are a genius!"
....
 

 

 

You missed the part where - after a core group of loyal players carve out a cruel existence in a loveless world of spreadsheets and grind - they periodically smash what we've built.

[Megabosslord]

18 hours ago, fusion94 said:

Poor comms is something they could have changed from beta --> launch and they didn't. If anything it's actually worse now.

Instead of a roadmap we have a list of things described as "rest assured this is one of our top priorities" with no timeframes, and despite it having already been promised before and kicked down the road.

 

[Aaron Cain]

Naming something a top priority does not make it happen.

Adding it on a roadmap does not make it happen

Placing it on known issues list, the same

Advertising it on a Kickstarter site, apparently the same.

 

The only thing that makes stuff happen is actually very simple......Just work your ass of and Make it happen! Thats what i do at work every single day and i am still believing the developers at NQ are doing the same, but then don't say stuff like top priority but simple, planned implementation day or something. Any self renowned professional company works with duedates and consequences for not reaching them. Even it its only a simple red line on a matrix or a 10 minutes meeting with higher management explaining the delay.

Top priority with no dates for implementation or roadmaps are kinda meaningless

[PleiJades]

NQ has shown several times that they do not listen at all.

They probalby don't have a roadmap because of the train wreck of Steam-players. I am quite sure that the software I am doing at work has more users than DU, which probably is quite easy.

Watching NQ feels like watching a total newbie in software development doing his/her newbie work. Nice try but everyone is like "WTF you doing"?

They have to find a way to turn this train wreck into profit. And I am not seeing it.