THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread

[mark-o-solo]

Hey, I just came onto the forums and I have to say this: I have done a tour of all the creative space games: star citizen, empyrion, space engineers, KSP, you name it, I've been there. DU is by far the most amazing, complex game out there. It is the best. In terms of multitude of things to do, the depth of building, etc.

So in the name of the gaming community, in the name of me bringing people onto this amazing game, in the name of more players and the future of DU:
I understand and respect your decision to make it a monthly billing model. But that decision was taken close to ten years ago! Please, pretty please shift to a purchase model instead of the monthly billing. I assure you, ALL of the friends I tried to get to play, including myself are scared off this horrible model.
Add a shop for skins and rare deco items like star citizen and others have. Add the option to buy ships, etc. You will get the needed revenue by getting a flood of new players once you move away from the subscription model. Hell, I would buy skins.
Just please, get away from that trap, that horrible scarecrow of a subscription model.
Cheers

[Celestis]

Well, I just received an email inviting me to watch other people playing a game I can no-longer afford to play .... why would I do that?!

 

I played DU since Alpha and they changed the game and made it worse then changed the game and made it worse until eventually they launched with a sub that's twice what they said it would be..... and continued to make it worse....

 

I'm not coming back to watch other people playing a game I used to like playing myself.

 

I'd come back if they halved the sub because although the game is way worse than it was during Alpha and early Beta, there are still things in the game that are fun to play, just not for as much per month as they are asking; I would pay half that though.

 

So NQ, if you are listening, there might be others who would come back if the sub was halved.

[Gearss]

The future of DU is this: 

 

[Gearss]

DU is Minecraft on Steroids

[blundertwink]

On 11/21/2023 at 9:22 AM, Gearss said:

DU is Minecraft on Steroids

 

Except that other sci-fi sandbox games are far more popular -- Empyrion has over 1,700 people playing the game as I type this. Dual Universe has 28 people playing, which is also the 24-hour peak. 

 

Even if this was a real advert and not a reddit post (with zero upvotes, just sayin'), you aren't going to convince anyone that this statement is true....not when the game needs to get over 60 times as many daily players just to catch up to a game like Empyrion, which first hit EA in 2015 (over a year after NQ was founded, by the way). 

 

When even the devs have stopped giving the game major updates, maybe a user-crafted advert that gets no meaningful views isn't "the future"... 

 

It's great that you're a fan of the game and that you're enjoying it....but it's at the point where you have to accept that DU is what it is and is not going to change much. It might stay online forever as it is or it might vanish tomorrow, but either way let's not pretend like there's any path forward for making this game more popular. 

[Pleione]

24 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

Except that other sci-fi sandbox games are far more popular -- Empyrion has over 1,700 people playing the game as I type this. Dual Universe has 28 people playing, which is also the 24-hour peak. 

 

 

It was a great advert, but like most advertisements, fails to mention the flaws that are keeping people away.  Its my opinion the tax system is the most constraining.  When me and my playing partner left we were spending 6 days a week, 4+ hours a day, earning the in-game cash needed to pay the taxes on our infrastructure.  That left us 1 day a week (about 14% of our playing time) to explore near items and actually PLAY.  It just wasn't worth it.

 

FWIW I consider both property taxes and the schematic fees "taxes", since they serve no purpose other than to slow players down and constrain them.

 

Lack of deliverance of some features - like player owned markets that have been long promised, didn't help.

 

Of course, I laughed out loud on the "Explore new planets" - we had more of those in Alpha and Beta than exist in production.  But that concept died when they abandoned procedurally created planets; not that they had a database which could have handled those.