This needs to be adressed immediately @NQ

[Rimezx]

So the problem is about the abandonment and decay system after subscription ends. As the system stands now when a player's subscription ends a 90 day timer starts and after this timer ends this player loses ownership over any construct they own, making that construct available for claiming by others and if not claimed it just dissapears from the game after one more month. This applies for every place and tile in the universe including haven. 

 

I don't know which monkey thought that this is a good idea. I understand that leaving constructs on alioth forever can cause stability issues and lag and they need to be recycled somehow, also the planet will be filled with inactive tiles from inactive players that could be reused by new players. All that is understandable BUT a player should be able to keep their stuff if they want to take a break from the game.

 

As this system stands now whats gonna happen is players will eventually stop playing for a while, because thats what people do they don't play games forever, they quit they come back, they have lives and work. They are going to figure out they lost of their constructs and effort and what are they gonna do then? You guessed it right, leave the game and never look back. Dual universe is a big time investment. It is not a game like rust where you play for a week build stuff and then hop on a new server. This effort cannot just be deleted like this because of optimization issues. If i know that all of my effort is going to be deleted eventually then i should just quit outright, is the though proccess most people are gonna have when they figure this out. Have you seen another online game of the mmo genre do this? This seems like an intentional extortion of a sort .. "buy game time or you lose your constructs". I know that this is most likely not intented (really hope not).

 

Since i don't like talking out of my a@@ and i like providing suggestions rather that randomly criticizing someone, i am going to propose all of the solutions i can think of for this issue with prio from top to bottom in which i think would be the best.

Possible solutions:

 

1. Make game simply not load costructs of accounts with inactive game time. The tile will be taken but people will not load or see anything on it until the player buys game time again. 

2. Create an istance somewhere in the persistent universe where a player can go and store everything they own when they quit. Only visible to said player and anyone they have given rights to and not loadable by the rest, so its just data and doesnt impact the game stability. 

3. Reduce number of HQ tiles to one per player but make this one tile be untoutched forever. Or give a main HQ or something for this reason. 

4. Create a new dump planet/moon where players dump their stuff when they quit. 

5. This one is the worst idea but is acceptable. Increase inactive time from 3 months to 2 years and not less. And no 6 months is not enough. People quit for 6 months and come back. 

 

My conclusion is that this change cannot wait. People are going to quit over this and never come back. if u wait for 3 months before implementing this and ppl lose their constructs they are gone. After one year at most the game will be dead. I was one of the first people to warn you about patch 0.23 back in the beta and guess what exactly what i said happened. This time around there won't be a "release" to save your asses if you botch this again. Consider yourselves warned. 

 

[Msoul]

Hey there Rimezx. I just wanted to point out that a player's safe moon territories (ie: Haven and Sanctuary) are currently exempt from said abandonment system. These locations can thus be used for longterm storage in the event anyone wants to take a 3+ month vacation. Just keep in mind that only constructs belonging to the owner of the territory are exempt, so if assets are tied to an organization said player will need to transfer ownership to themselves for this to work. With that said, organization owned constructs will only become abandoned if said organization lacks construct slots or does not have at least one active legate (ie: with active subscription).

 

Hope that helps.

[Rimezx]

Yes it does. Wish I could keep a tile on alioth aswell tho. 

[Rimezx]

Also if that is the case i would like a definitive answer from NQ just to make sure. Also this should be mentioned in the devblogs cause it's misleading for someone reading the posts about this subject.

[Vargen]

Here you can read about safe moons and how it works.

 

[GraXXoR]

calling people monkeys likely won't help your case. I'm extremely critical of NQ at times and sometimes allude to their work being "intern level" or having been performed by one of their staff's junior school kids... etc...  But I try to stop short of calling NQ staff monkeys or other names... Just my personal opinion. We can sometimes get a bit overheated when talking something we feel strongly about.

[Msoul]

The first instance of IAR (Inactive Asset Requisition) was added in the Panacea update in early 2022. This devblog covers the initial implementation and Vargen already linked the Athena reference where Haven was added. The official wiki also has a page that outlines conditions for loss of constructs or land that summarizes it fairly well. It has also been brought up a few times in the official discord where the developers have clarified it.

 

 

A lot of the confusion and misleading posts you are referring too are likely due to the organization caveat I mentioned. During beta it was extremely common for players to have their own private orgs since it would greatly expand the number of available construct slots with no real downsides. Unfortunately quite a few neglected or were unaware of this aspect and ended up losing those org owned constructs. Naturally such a loss can be extremely frustrating so please spread the word "Haven and Sanctuary are safe longterm storage but only for constructs directly owned by the territory owner" and hopefully no one else gets caught unaware. 

[Maxim Kammerer]

28 minutes ago, Jinxed said:

calling people monkeys likely won't help your case

 

At least they are simians. However, biologic taxonomy is a reather off-topic.

[Daphne Jones]

I think having Haven and Sanc permanently safe is adequate. 

[Zireaa]

On 11/12/2022 at 2:11 PM, Rimezx said:

So the problem is about the abandonment and decay system after subscription ends. As the system stands now when a player's subscription ends a 90 day timer starts and after this timer ends this player loses ownership over any construct they own, making that construct available for claiming by others and if not claimed it just dissapears from the game after one more month. This applies for every place and tile in the universe including haven. 

 

I don't know which monkey thought that this is a good idea. I understand that leaving constructs on alioth forever can cause stability issues and lag and they need to be recycled somehow, also the planet will be filled with inactive tiles from inactive players that could be reused by new players. All that is understandable BUT a player should be able to keep their stuff if they want to take a break from the game.

 

As this system stands now whats gonna happen is players will eventually stop playing for a while, because thats what people do they don't play games forever, they quit they come back, they have lives and work. They are going to figure out they lost of their constructs and effort and what are they gonna do then? You guessed it right, leave the game and never look back. Dual universe is a big time investment. It is not a game like rust where you play for a week build stuff and then hop on a new server. This effort cannot just be deleted like this because of optimization issues. If i know that all of my effort is going to be deleted eventually then i should just quit outright, is the though proccess most people are gonna have when they figure this out. Have you seen another online game of the mmo genre do this? This seems like an intentional extortion of a sort .. "buy game time or you lose your constructs". I know that this is most likely not intented (really hope not).

 

Since i don't like talking out of my a@@ and i like providing suggestions rather that randomly criticizing someone, i am going to propose all of the solutions i can think of for this issue with prio from top to bottom in which i think would be the best.

Possible solutions:

 

1. Make game simply not load costructs of accounts with inactive game time. The tile will be taken but people will not load or see anything on it until the player buys game time again. 

2. Create an istance somewhere in the persistent universe where a player can go and store everything they own when they quit. Only visible to said player and anyone they have given rights to and not loadable by the rest, so its just data and doesnt impact the game stability. 

3. Reduce number of HQ tiles to one per player but make this one tile be untoutched forever. Or give a main HQ or something for this reason. 

4. Create a new dump planet/moon where players dump their stuff when they quit. 

5. This one is the worst idea but is acceptable. Increase inactive time from 3 months to 2 years and not less. And no 6 months is not enough. People quit for 6 months and come back. 

 

My conclusion is that this change cannot wait. People are going to quit over this and never come back. if u wait for 3 months before implementing this and ppl lose their constructs they are gone. After one year at most the game will be dead. I was one of the first people to warn you about patch 0.23 back in the beta and guess what exactly what i said happened. This time around there won't be a "release" to save your asses if you botch this again. Consider yourselves warned. 

 

I agree with you should not lose everything their should be a overflow  Inventory or something where all the things you crafted  and material goes that you can claim when you come back two the game 

[GraXXoR]

9 hours ago, Zireaa said:

I agree with you should not lose everything their should be a overflow  Inventory or something where all the things you crafted  and material goes that you can claim when you come back two the game 

I disagree. I believe there are already too few mechanics in this game. Scavenging should definitely be a thing. They could even play it like core overflow.  Every day a certain number of cores become abandoned. 
 

 

[Aaron Cain]

Why not add NPC bases around all mooons and planets with a fixed abandonement and fixed destruction so there is a small timeframe for explorers to actually find a npc base and wait till scavange

[blundertwink]

I think NQ especially underestimates this as a problem...yes, you can tell people to stash stuff at a safe moon, but that again puts the work and effort on the player's side. 

 

A player that's about to churn isn't going to take the time to pack up their stuff and move it to a safe moon expecting to come back someday. No, they're just going to churn. 

 

The best MMOs (and subs in general) understand that every customer eventually churns...but they also frequently re-engage. 

 

NQ can scold players to move stuff to Haven, but that misunderstands completely the mindset of a customer that's about to churn...and it's NQ that will suffer from this shortsighted concept, because clearly their churn rates are very bad among new players (as you can see from Steam's rapidly dwindling active player count). 

 

With no (apparent) strategy on how to grow the game, re-engaging lapsed customers is critical.

 

Telling the few customers that want to re-sub "welp, you should've moved stuff to Haven" is naive and self-defeating.

 

Also...if the OP wasn't aware of how this works, many others will be in the same boat...it isn't like NQ does a good job explaining all these rules.

 

They expect players to seek out this information, to do the work to prepare for their own churning sub, and don't see any issue with this at all.

 

On 11/12/2022 at 4:41 PM, Jinxed said:

sometimes allude to their work being "intern level"

 

Couldn't help but comment.

 

Their CTO's last job before NQ was an internship. Their head of tech's only other job was as an intern, so saying their work is "intern-level" isn't even a stretch, it's literally true. 

[GraXXoR]

LOL.. sometimes a broken clock (me) IS right twice a day....

[Kezzle]

4 hours ago, blundertwink said:

Their CTO's last job before NQ was an internship. Their head of tech's only other job was as an intern, so saying their work is "intern-level" isn't even a stretch, it's literally true. 

 

Holy amateur hour, Batman! CTO, as in "Chief Technical Officer"? The mind boggles.

[blundertwink]

5 minutes ago, Kezzle said:

 

Holy amateur hour, Batman! CTO, as in "Chief Technical Officer"? The mind boggles.

 

Yes. Maybe I'm being a bit unfair. To be clear...this is someone who has spent many years at NQ.

 

It isn't like they are fresh from an internship and immediately became NQ's CTO.

 

That said, we're talking about a highly complex stack in a company where this is their only product.

 

Experience is very important, far more important than domain knowledge alone IMO...you'd want someone who has released, scaled, and maintained products before. 

[Kezzle]

10 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

Yes. Maybe I'm being a bit unfair. To be clear...this is someone who has spent many years at NQ.

 

It isn't like they are fresh from an internship and immediately became NQ's CTO.

 

That said, we're talking about a highly complex stack in a company where this is their only product.

 

Experience is very important, far more important than domain knowledge alone IMO...you'd want someone who has released, scaled, and maintained products before. 

Ah, that's a little bit less worrying, but you're right that a bit more breadth and experience of other environments and ways of approaching solutions would be advantageous...