THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread

[Atmosph3rik]

1 hour ago, Vazqez said:

I don't agree with the rules of the game, that's why I don't subscribe.
I want to help NQ
I want to help DU.

 

That's great that you want to help.  But you seem to be ignoring the fact that games usually have objectives and obstacles in them.

 

PvP isn't just an activity you can do in DU, it's an obstacle to your progress.  There are other paths to progress where PvP isn't an obstacle.  But turning off PvP means turning off that obstacle.

 

What you are asking for is the equivalent of playing Super Mario Bros and then complaining to Nintendo that you paid real money for the game, and you shouldn't have to make Mario jump over all of these obstacles.

 

Some games allow you to cheat.  But online multiplayer games usually do not.

 

There are other paths that you can follow to progress in DU that don't involve PvP.  But if you want to follow the PvP path you have to jump over the PvP obstacles.

 

There's no rule requiring you to do PvP missions or mine PvP asteroids.  That's an option.

[Vazqez]

1 hour ago, Atmosph3rik said:

There's no rule requiring you to do PvP missions or mine PvP asteroids.  That's an option.

 

And that's where you're wrong, my friend. It's not an option, it's just an ultimatum.
Which can be formulated as follows.

If you do not agree to PVP, you will not be able to fly the ship to other planets.
or you won't dig up any asteroids.

Repeating with PVP this option is cheating.

[Wyndle]

The former then.

 

You are not the only person who has told NQ about problems with PvP.  There are many other problems that others have told NQ about from the very beginning, yet they still ended up at this point.  It is a years long running gag that NQ doesn't listen to the forums. 

 

Thanks for trying.

[Hecticus]

On 9/17/2023 at 3:38 PM, Vazqez said:

If you do not agree to PVP, you will not be able to fly the ship to other planets.
or you won't dig up any asteroids.

This is the biggest misconception about PVP.

radar range is 2 SU. As long as you don’t fly in a straight line between planets, your chances of getting ganked are negligible. There just aren’t enough pirates out there to cover the possible routes. Space is huge.

 

Asteroids.. so imagine, there are dozens of asteroids out there. And the travel time between them is 20 minutes to an hour or more, assuming you had them all mapped out by proximity. Now imagine you are a pirate. And you know there is someone out there mining one of these asteroids. But you don’t know which one. Are you going to spend your whole allotment of playtime for that day flying from one empty asteroid to the next, hoping to catch a miner. ?

If you are mining an asteroid close to the safezone, or an exotic, there is a good chance that a pirate will come along eventually. There are lots of people out here in disposable haulers getting ore. Getting caught by pirates is rare. This is experience btw, not theory. 
 

I am  not interested in pvp (in this game anyway), so I don’t pvp. The effect of pvp on the non pvp population is dramatically overblown imo.
 

-in before “ I can’t get plasma without joining legion”.  None of the people who typically complain about pvp have any use for that anyway.

[Hecticus]

Having said all that; I did almost quit when they nerfed core speeds to accommodate pvp gameplay. There have been plenty of conflicts between the playstyles and I don’t think all the complaints are invalid. Just the one I quoted in the post above.

[Vazqez]

19 hours ago, Hecticus said:

This is the biggest misconception about PVP.

radar range is 2 SU. As long as you don’t fly in a straight line between planets, your chances of getting ganked are negligible. There just aren’t enough pirates out there to cover the possible routes. Space is huge.

 

The conclusion is that pirates are a problem and you have to fly away from the routes.
But you wrote that it's only a matter of the number of pirates to completely prevent others from playing,

You described the current state of the game, which is poor thanks to the actions of PVP players.

I am writing about changing the philosophy of PVP.

PVP can take place anywhere, provided that each party agrees to PVP.

A PVP player wouldn't have to fly for hours without a xel when PVP could take place anywhere.

[Koffye]

If pvp is the reason people stop playing, then it's not the player's fault, it's the fault of a poor implementation by the developer.

[Atmosph3rik]

9 hours ago, Vazqez said:

The conclusion is that pirates are a problem and you have to fly away from the routes.
But you wrote that it's only a matter of the number of pirates to completely prevent others from playing,

You described the current state of the game, which is poor thanks to the actions of PVP players.

 

My conclusion is that your confusing gameplay with problems.

 

The pirates are supposed to be a problem.  You don't have to try to solve that problem if you don't want to.  But you can't have the reward associated with solving the problem, unless you solve the problem.

 

There are other ways to earn Quanta in the game.  But you're going to be expected to solve some problems there too.

 

If they did allow you to turn PvP off.  They would obviously need to rebalance the reward for those asteroids and missions, because they would be too easy.  And they would undermine all the other activities in the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Vazqez]

28 minutes ago, Atmosph3rik said:

f they did allow you to turn PvP off.  They would obviously need to rebalance the reward for those asteroids and missions, because they would be too easy.  And they would undermine all the other activities in the game.

You're wrong again, my friend.

Nothing needs to be balanced.

To destroy a ship in PVP, you only need a maximum of 5 minutes

It takes 2-3 hours to dig up an asteroid and it doesn't involve pressing the FIRE button.

Talking about risk and reward is an empty platitude.

What counts is the time actively devoted to gaming.

[Atmosph3rik]

2 hours ago, Vazqez said:

Talking about risk and reward is an empty platitude.

 

The size of the reward was balanced to match the current amount of risk.  That's just a fact.

 

Asking NQ to remove the risk and give you the reward anyway is the same as asking NQ to just put the Quanta in your wallet.

 

If you don't care about the Quanta, which you said at the beginning of this discussion, then you don't need to do the parts of the game that involve PvP.

 

You can just leave them to the people who DO want to do PvP.

 

That shouldn't affect you.

[Vazqez]

1 hour ago, Atmosph3rik said:

 

You can just leave them to the people who DO want to do PvP.

 

That shouldn't affect you.

Well, that's the point. Except that the current game philosophy does not allow turning off PVP.

Currently, you are forced to participate in PVP whether you want to or not.

It's possible that the translator isn't working properly, so I'll simplify it.

player A turns on PVP
player B turns on PVP
player C does not enable PVP

A and B can fight.
  A and C can't fight
B and C cannot fight.

It can't be simpler.

Risk and reward are empty words.

 

The only thing that counts is the time spent actively playing.

 

[Tordan]

On 9/23/2023 at 5:00 PM, Vazqez said:

Currently, you are forced to participate in PVP whether you want to or not.

 

This is just categorically untrue.  I have over 9000 hours of enjoyment into this game and I have never done ANY PvP, except for a few test battles on the PTS

[Dixiii]

It’s still unclear for my, why NQ no trying to actively fix situation with DU.

 

They have:

- good working engine

- differently looking planets with various environments

- elements building system

- ship building

- nice graphics (for now nice only daytime) To make it looks acceptable at nights they need to return smoothing filter used in 2022, or fix it another way.

- flight system

-  LUA script system

Quite a few well made systems. They just miss easy understandable and reasonably fun goals in the game.

 

About today’s game balance, and typical for mmorpg goal of "earing some money". Online population is quite low, so chances to sell something to others players are very low. Especially for newcomers. To earn at least some quanta (in-game currency), there are only two ways. Do up to 3 flight challenges once a day for some small amount of quanta. Or do transport missions that are boring waste of time. Primary way of earning quanta, by selling Tier1 resources to NPC was up at the day of game release in September 2022 for about two months, but was removed (*) by NQ. This also caused major DU population loss.

(*) I know it was not technically removed, rather not updated. They had NPC vendors, buying T1 resource at fixed price of 25 quanta/L, in every market, with rather big volume, but still limited. When those buy orders were fulfilled they never refreshed them, neither introduced something new.

 

Currently there are no easy and gameplay interesting ways to earn quanta. As a proof of that I see some complains on forums and in Discord, that tile rent fee should be less, schematics should cost less and so on. This apparently point on a surprising to veteran players fact, that newcomers and returned casual players run out of money too fast.

 

Why not to add, refresh some other ways to earn quanta?

 

1. Refresh old NPC buy orders at 25q/L of Tier1 resources. If you want to make it a bit more challenging – add them on all planets, except Alioth, or on more distant planets only.

This will not kill/break economics, since due to degradation of online population there is almost no economics. Only thing that still can be sold on the market are Tier2+ resources, still at very low prices.

The way of adding T1 buy orders is simple and easy. If you think it’s too boring, let’s looks at next.

 

2. Instead of basic resources, create NPC buy orders for various elements. To make some diversity and add some challenge, make those orders last for limited time. Just for sample, Basic Atmospheric Engine L was selling for about 400k (we use prices of times when the game had still a lot of players, let’s say November 2022). So set an NPC order for it, depending on location, 120% of 400k on Alioth, 200% on Jago.

Will look like this:

NPC buy order: Basic Atmospheric Engine L, Jago, every market, price 800k, qty:100’000, last one week.

 

Prices should clearly be profitable. Current T1 ore price is around 8-9q/L, while NPC was offering 25.

This will not be so plain and simple as selling Tier1 ores to NPC, but if orders will be random, will adds some fun of building items, or just buying them on Alioth market and transport. This will depend on random, since for mentioned above engine, it might be easier just to buy, deliver, and sell it, while for some non basic hover engine situation will be quite different.

  

Current system, where players are expected to waste a lot of real time, flying missions to distant planets, same time adding more fun and targets to PvP players clearly do not work well. Look on almost absent game population!

 

[Dixiii]

They also do nothing about selling DAC's. They exist, they can be used to pay for game, but no shop to buy them, no way to safe trade them. Why so? It's a proven method of attracting more players to the game (PLEX in EVE, gold in Albion and so on).

 

Same time they do strange thing, like adding new planets. Who need them? Were existing overcrowded? Were prices for resources too high? Absence of high tier resources? Answer is no for all above. Doing some other steps, that community propose, and attracting more players to make the game really mmo, and not almost single player, is much more important.

 

[Wyndle]

22 hours ago, Dixiii said:

They also do nothing about selling DAC's. They exist, they can be used to pay for game, but no shop to buy them, no way to safe trade them. Why so? It's a proven method of attracting more players to the game (PLEX in EVE, gold in Albion and so on).

 

Same time they do strange thing, like adding new planets. Who need them? Were existing overcrowded? Were prices for resources too high? Absence of high tier resources? Answer is no for all above. Doing some other steps, that community propose, and attracting more players to make the game really mmo, and not almost single player, is much more important.

 

Please keep in mind that prior to DU NQ was not a game studio.  We cannot assume when they started they were familiar with all the tropes and tools of the gaming industry.  Now that their manpower has been reduced it seems we cannot expect more than bug fixes and treasure hunts.

 

Regarding DACs; If you look at the game economies in MMO games that have RMT (DAC, PLEX, WoW Token, etc) there are in-game consequences.  WoW went on a massive inflation spree for several expansions before they started putting in more controls but the damage was done, WoW became pay to avoid the grind (aka pay to win) while simultaneously destroying their leveling experience. 

 

DU's economy did not stabilize enough for the DACs to be used as planned without nuking the economy.  If they turned DACs on with the game as it is now I am relatively sure it would kill what is left of the game.

[CptLoRes]

Bottom line is that despite all the early stage questions we made about game design, NQ felt they knew better and painted themself into a corner by making a cloud based system that does not scale well and is to costly to host.

 

And subsequently almost all design decisions since v23, has been about reducing cost instead of how to improve game play and make the game ohh you now.. fun to play.

[Wyndle]

19 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Bottom line is that despite all the early stage questions we made about game design, NQ felt they knew better and painted themself into a corner by making a cloud based system that does not scale well and is to costly to host.

 

And subsequently almost all design decisions since v23, has been about reducing cost instead of how to improve game play and make the game ohh you now.. fun to play.

Oh the irony.  Wasn't the point of making it a cloud based system specifically for the intent of making the game dynamically scalable? Weren't all the features that were dropped (or handicapped) what attracted a significant portion of the initial interest?

[Pleione]

11 hours ago, Wyndle said:

Oh the irony.  Wasn't the point of making it a cloud based system specifically for the intent of making the game dynamically scalable? Weren't all the features that were dropped (or handicapped) what attracted a significant portion of the initial interest?

 

Yep.  Personally played pre-alpha and was thinking this was the game for me for the next decade.  Then patch by patch they reduced it to the current state, with things accelerating after V0.23 (as previously mentioned).

[Wyndle]

5 new forum posts in the past week with 1 being a repeat question that was literally answered weeks earlier and another a necro post from 2 years ago. 

 

At what point does NQ decide the forums are an unnecessary expense?

[CptLoRes]

DU is the only product NQ has, so shutting down the forum (or anything else related to the game) is a very public statement about the state of the company.

 

So my guess is that they are keeping DU 'alive' to try and maintain the facade, while working on some other products to make it big in crypto (sigh), get bought up or some other harebrained scheme like that..

[Celestis]

I'm sad that there is talk of shutting down DU... or was it just the forums? I haven't heard anything officially, just a line or two in posts.

I gave up playing because I couldn't afford the subs.... if they hadn't doubled it I'd still be playing.... crazy to double the subs at launch as I think many of us left when our DACs ran out because the subs are too dear.

It would have been great if they'd enticed us back with a free month or half-price month for everyone... to celebrate the anniversary... get us in and maybe we'd get caught and enjoy the new patches added since we left.... new planets to explore perhaps??

I'm not paying $20 for an in-game statue! but I would have paid $10 to come back for a month.

[Celestis]

1. I did not receive any notification about the 30% discount so NQ clearly does not realise that if we are not playing the game they need to email us to invite us back if they want us back.

 

2. Even with 30% discount it's still way too expensive.

 

 

[CptLoRes]

21 hours ago, Celestis said:

2. Even with 30% discount it's still way too expensive.

 

As I said earlier, NQ has painted themself into a corner by making a game that is to costly to cloud host.

So it may very well be the case that having more people join the game at reduced prices, will actually lead to NQ losing money on the game.

[blundertwink]

On 10/21/2023 at 12:29 PM, CptLoRes said:

 

As I said earlier, NQ has painted themself into a corner by making a game that is to costly to cloud host.

So it may very well be the case that having more people join the game at reduced prices, will actually lead to NQ losing money on the game.

 

I see what you mean, but I am not so sure that the game's high cost are purely driven by the infra living on the cloud. Having worked with AWS for so many years, there's so many ways to skin that cat.

 

We don't know what the breakdown is between running the game on EC2, their now-reversed choice to leverage DynamoDB (very expensive), etc., but it's entirely plausible to suggest that DU wouldn't still be online without AWS. 

 

In theory, the cloud is a great choice for small scale MMOs that don't need the cost savings from standing your own hardware. Yes, you'll always be less efficient (especially when they also didn't craft a custom engine), but you would also be far more flexible and cost-effective with smaller player counts...like DU has always had. 

 

I think 99% of the problems with scale and cost are due to poor software design: layers upon layers of bad tech that were built because the company never had technical nor design leadership. We see this with the constant, never-fixable bugs, the slow development pace, and sluggish performance, and way too many major features refactored radically just before release. 

 

All that points to bad software and bad software design; I think there's great potential to host MMOs on the cloud if it is done right, especially niche products that truly benefit from some level of dynamic scale. 

 

I hope indie studios considering AWS or Azure do their homework better than NQ did, because the math suggests it can absolutely work...personally, I don't think DU would be any more effective living in its own metal.

 

Their bad software would not run any more effectively on self-hosted servers, and it wouldn't be any cheaper with so few players...probably more expensive, even. 

 

NQ needed more technical expertise early on in general -- AWS is near the bottom of the list in terms of their technical sins in my opinion. 

[STARSUNNA]

On 10/27/2022 at 8:46 AM, NQ-Wanderer said:

What does the future of Dual Universe hold for you, Noveans?

Let us know down below 👇

Adding copy and paste tool for the soil and allowing to blueprint soils with static cores. It be nice to see volcanoes added 2 some of the planets and some hot spring Geysers. Adding some armed forces npc's protecting public areas from players that become wanted by stealing from others so armed forces attack trying to kill and only way to get cleared from wanted is by paying big fines. 

Make trees removed when clearing land, trees are collected for players to place trees else where on land. Add designing our own skin suits that we can blueprint players creation making content suit skins that players can market DU creators post. Players high demand on more content would be solved with players designing skin suits to deal and use bringing unlimited skins as players keep creating just ships and buildings now adding skin suits for players to make. it's the future enable those features are simple and the players do designers skin suit.