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THE FUTURE OF DUAL UNIVERSE - Discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

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I never talked about a single player game it's an MMORPG... :) What I meant is that it's just like in a classic MMORPG where there is pvp you can also have a pve system for it farm for example. Here it will be rather to train to use in this case ships and weapons... 

It will also bring in-game content.

 

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As much as one would team up and be one of many in a battle ship, there is one problem.

Time zones! One universe and players from all over the world. An don't even think 24 hours. Work, sleep and bodily functions leave you with 2-4 hours tops.

LUA is still to cumbersum to use even when leaching on lua-dev.

DRM still does not work out as it should. My friend can give me rights to harvest but I can't return the favour. Solo was never an option so we duo-play but we are back on Haven not to go bust on tile tax. There is a constant need for T2 and above and we have to buy it and schematiskt too. You might think a player driven economy is good. Competition makes you stronger? Competition creates bankruptcy! At least in a DU.

I activated my Steam month and at the end of the year I will have to re evaluate my participation. My friend got a few month more prepaid subscription to play -or not

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

It's getting boring. Feature, everyone missing mostly - any kind of PvE combat, and it still absent and even not announced at all.

Online numbers are getting less and less, seems mostly fans of factory building games remains, but this leads to a problem: almost no one buying stuff on the market, since they make everything by them self.

 

Introduction of Talemai made things active an entertaining for a few days, but not for a long.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/23/2022 at 6:15 PM, Dixiii said:

seems mostly fans of factory building games remains

 

Satisfactory has literally 158 times more people playing right now compared to DU. 

 

So...the vast, vast majority of people that do enjoy factory building games play something else. 

 

DU has ~0.36% as many players compared to the people playing Satisfactory and Factorio right now...so even if DU only attracts a factory building type of crowd, it's massively unsuccessful in that genre. 

 

Granted those are very popular games, but the point is that DU is immensely unpopular no matter the type of player. DU is not even close to the same league as those games in terms of popularity -- by a huge, huge margin. 

 

So far, NQ hasn't shown any vestige of a plan to improve the game through updates or a change in strategy. They keep staying the course and wondering why no one is playing. 

 

My advice is to enjoy DU while you can (if you enjoy it) because I don't see any evidence that it can survive as a commercial product with NQ maintaining the status quot. 

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If you want to run a factory, run away from DU fast. I am trying to do that but since 0.23 and mining adjustments its hell.

And to be honest, Space engineers with its mods and mining system show it could be done way better, and trust me DU still has more potential as Space engineers. They just need to use it and dump the academic approach with a tyranical AI that runs all players. 

A game Should be able to run solo with no issues. Doing it in a group should then bring extra profit over sole running.

 

DU limits everything for probably server tech.

 

just in respect: Tabula rasa had about75k accounts and was a sub, closed almost overnight for the low numbers...

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3 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

just in respect: Tabula rasa had about75k accounts and was a sub, closed almost overnight for the low numbers...

 

Yeah, there's no feasible way for DU to survive as a subscription model.
 

It's just not physically possible. If NQ believes there's a path forward for DU, there's no way it will be as a sub. 

 

People that think that NQ can somehow skate by on 20-30k subs are not doing the math correctly (as if DU even has that amount) -- even 75k subs isn't close to being sustainable because of inherently high churn with this monetization model. 

 

If DU does have a future, they will have no choice but to end the subscription model and go free to play.

 

It isn't remotely plausible to suggest there's any avenue for a sub to work, no matter what they change or how quickly. 

 

The future of DU is free to play, perhaps with NFTs because the CEO loves the blockchain like a firstborn child...

 

Free to play would destroy them just as quickly, though. Their server tech sucks at coping with an influx of players and they have no one on their team capable of engineering a viable FTP model.

 

If they had a savvy person in charge of monetization, they never would have rolled a sub to begin with, because everyone in (any) industry knows subs only work with large scales...and anyone with sense knew DU wouldn't achieve that scale. 

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9 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

just in respect: Tabula rasa had about75k accounts and was a sub, closed almost overnight for the low numbers...

In retrospect: I miss Tabula Rasa! I only started playing when it was too late to save it, but I had fun in there while it lasted!

 

TR was active for over a year before it closed down, but that was at the start of 2009, developers where trying to make the next WoW and had totally unrealistic expectations. I feel TR lacked exposure and accessibility...

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On 10/27/2022 at 5:46 PM, NQ-Wanderer said:

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

Let us know down below 👇

 

more LAGGG :(( i really love the game concept, but you guys really gotta fix the lag. i can play ALL major games in 60fps 1440p or even 4k, such as forza horizon 5, dying light 2, resident evil village ..etc, but DU lags all the time even in 1080p. please focus on fixing performance issues before working on anything else, it would be so great to play this game in 60fps. for example add more graphics options to play around with, why can't i change shadow resolution and distance like in other games? or reflections? those are the main FPS eaters in any game.

 

DU has very basic graphics, similar to planetside 2, which i can run in native 4k maxed out in 60fps, no issues! also as far as i know, DU has been in development for about 8 years, so for 8 year old game it should run like a dream on a PC that can run 2020 - 2022 games in 1440p.

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23 minutes ago, Megabosslord said:

Can we get any assurance that NQ won't bork our stuff again, wipe what we've built, or force us to use DRM-free BPs to share/trade voxelmancy then give those BPS away for free to other players again while taking away the money we made selling them? 

Reread their announcements, they already left the door open in their wording for a future wipe.

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I have more and more doubt that this game will turn better and become more active in nearest months. After two patches there is a complete silence. No news, no announces of next patches and features. Nothing. Same time, I see more and more claimed tiles turning inactive and fading away. Same time market activity falls.

 

Because currently there are almost none interesting teamplay activities. Various means of T1 resource gathering and selling it to market bots (even distant bots on Teoma/Jago) gone. With word "for economy balance". The only income of quanta, left in game, are boring transport missions, that are mostly "waste a few hours of real life time watching your ship flying in space at max speed". Nothing else! I do not count 100k login reward,  and 300k challenge that is same everyday and can't be considered fun activity anymore. This is too few for a mmorpg game to keep it alive.

 

DU has nice graphics, interesting crafting, complex ship building. But all those features should be supported by easy understandable and fun to do everyday activities like PvE mob shooting, searching something on planets (for sample: same wrecks hunting, but on planets, and with any PvE fights on arrival, even with turrets). Else, freshly arrived players from Steam loose interest very fast, since  they see no easy to do activities.

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Right now I'd be happy if they just backed off the "fix" for the "rare" mining unit issue.  The issue was real, hit it a half-dozen times since launch and dutifully reported completed with log files.

 

Post 1.2.3 and the "fix" it is happening to about 1 in 5 of my calibration efforts.  Ballpark.  My org members are talking like this is the last straw...  the huge bump in frequency was reported in hours on Discord and via ticket.  No excuse for why they have not backed it off - beyond them simply not caring.  Or so it feels.

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20 hours ago, Dixiii said:

No news, no announces of next patches and features. Nothing. Same time, I see more and more claimed tiles turning inactive and fading away. Same time market activity falls.

 

Unfortunately, it isn't really clear if NQ will continue to support the game...but as you've noticed, all the signs point to "no". 

 

There's just too much wrong to make the game work even with a years worth of updates (especially with their pace of development), and even NQ has to be waking up to this reality. 

 

20 hours ago, Dixiii said:

Else, freshly arrived players from Steam loose interest very fast, since  they see no easy to do activities.

 

This is why I'm not sure NQ will actually keep developing the game in 2023...when during peak play times you can't even break 200 concurrent players on the world's largest PC gaming platform as an MMO, it's time to stop what you're doing and focus on something else. 

 

I don't think NQ will announce anything one way or the other until the very last minute because they still want as much sub money as they can get, but it's rare to find a player that really believes DU can survive as an MMO -- so it's hard to believe NQ actually has a plan to turn things around and even harder to believe it would work if such a plan did exist. 

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3 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

you can't even break 200 concurrent players on the world's largest PC gaming platform 

 

The bulk of players, particularly the long time ones don't use Steam for DU. We buy game time from DU instead, so that they get all the revenue not just the fraction Steam would give them. So that number is misleading.

 

I'm sorry that you are not enjoying the game, but there are certainly those of us who do, and have, and will continue to.  I love this game. It is excellent and I want it to succeed. I have faith that they are listening and developing.

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Tordan said:

 

I have faith that they are listening and developing.

 

 

 

"Faith" is what it takes, there surely is no evidence they are doing either.

 

Many of us love the game, and continue to play, but do not share your faith.  We are just stubborn and choose to believe "Its not dead - yet."

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1 hour ago, Tordan said:

The bulk of players, particularly the long time ones don't use Steam for DU.

 

Which is kind of my point..."the bulk of the players" represents a tiny, tiny segment of gamers mostly limited to people that have played since alpha or beta.

 

There's should be no illusion that DU's largest distribution platform by far is Steam, not organic growth from its own launcher. 

 

I'm glad that you like the game, honestly. There are things to like without a doubt...but it's a subscription MMO.

 

A few gamers liking it isn't enough.

 

The dismal loss of players on Steam and the lack of apparent organic growth anywhere else is why I don't have faith that NQ will figure out how to make the game popular. 

 

It isn't enough to like the game or even to think the game is good, the game has to be popular for it to survive as a sub-based MMO. 

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1 hour ago, Pleione said:

"Faith" is what it takes, there surely is no evidence they are doing either

 

I'm not being religious. My faith comes from experience. I have plenty of evidence. I troubleshoot bugs in DU all the time, and then report them. I get regular feedback and usually the bugs are patched in the next cycle or 3 (although sometimes the wait is much longer then I would like) They listen to our feedback and even implement new tools simply because we requested them. (the Vertex Editor for instance) 

 

There is much about DU that I think is still problematic. Things that I would change if I could. I do not expect them to use my opinion as edict.

 

 

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20 hours ago, Pleione said:

 

"Faith" is what it takes, there surely is no evidence they are doing either.

 

Many of us love the game, and continue to play, but do not share your faith.  We are just stubborn and choose to believe "Its not dead - yet."

 

18 hours ago, Tordan said:

I'm not being religious. My faith comes from experience. I have plenty of evidence. I troubleshoot bugs in DU all the time, and then report them. I get regular feedback and usually the bugs are patched in the next cycle or 3 (although sometimes the wait is much longer then I would like

 

In my opinion, you're wrongly conflating your personal experience with public perception. Also, 3 update cycles to fix bugs is hardly good when their typical release cadence is 1 update every 2 months...

 

The only evidence that matters is the pace and content of updates.

 

If you're saying 1.1 and 1.2 offered a lot of content and fixed a ton of bugs...well, I wouldn't agree with this claim that the game is more stable or feature-rich...and player demographics would suggest that no one else buys this, either.

 

4 months is a long time for a sub-based game, especially when DU was supposed to still be riding a huge wave of popularity post-release.

 

This is the only way sub-based games work...the first few months are supposed to be the zenith, but DU barely made a splash and has since only lost players. 

 

DU's development is slow compared to any other sub-based MMO -- they haven't given the game stability or feature depth, there's no evidence they will ever do so, and the vast majority of people that try the game see the same thing. 

 

It's fine if you like the game, but insisting that DU's development pace is actually fine after so little has changed in 4 months is baffling and misunderstand how this whole genre works. 

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On 1/8/2023 at 9:08 PM, Cergorach said:

Reread their announcements, they already left the door open in their wording for a future wipe.

if there's another wipe, then i'm going to wipe this game from my pc forever. NQ doesn't seem to understand how big of an mental impact it is to those who like to create things and have put lot of effort and time into the game, it's like paying for house or car just to lose it all without getting any money back.

 

wipes are biggest mmo killers. if they want to kill the game, then wipe is good way to go tho.

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I think they know they would never survive another wipe...

 

... with maybe one exception:  A wipe after a 2 year shutdown to retool the game, with subscriptions being put in suspended animation, and generous bonuses to all who come back.

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Forget a future wipe...their latest announcement basically confirms that their focus is on a new project they've talked about before...a 3d blogging platform. 

 

There's a lot to unpack so I'll just leave this here.

 

Again, I'm not trying to break any rules posting a screenshot of a public post from NQ's CEO -- I think it's highly relevant to this topic about the future of DU. 

image.thumb.png.5e4fa8bec92d35353255e73cb74a1ab0.png

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I believe that other than only Subscriptions, Cosmetic shop or other game only related income is more than welcome.

If same tech can be used on more commercial purposes it is only beneficial to DU.

 

Sure it requires that development of DU must continue. I really hope it does. How ever those who advocate loudly that game is already dead will not help.

 

 

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