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When the White Knights turn Black (an open letter to the community and NQ)


Gunhand

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I wasn't going to write this post. It was also a post I never actually thought I would have to write, but events since release two months ago led me to this point. 

 

I don't post a great deal on these forums, but I'm an avid reader and professional lurker since joining at the Alpha stage. I try to keep my finger on the community pulse and to keep up to date on updates and the general buzz. I've played since Alpha and mostly enjoyed all the time I've spent. There has been many times when DU has fought against me and attempted to break me down. However I was always sold, like many others, on that potential carrot on a stick of "What if?".

 

Over the DU development since 0.23 and beyond, the community was gutted due to the introduction of schematics. As updates and patches were introduced to the game, I've watched with dismay the amount of players with high standing in the community, slowly turn on NQ and Dual Universe when they get that stark realisation that this game is never going to live up to that perceived potential. Some go quietly into the night, others announce their vitriol for a few weeks before quitting with much fanfare. 

Being a player since Alpha affords me an ability to see the bigger picture of what I perceive has been going on:

 

If you look at all the updates since Beta started and outside of some balancing updates to PVP and visual upgrades, everything else has been implemented to cut costs due to what I believe as woeful inadequacies at the design and concept level. The vision of this game and what was perceived could be done, didn't match the budget available and the technology. In short, the game that NQ wanted to make didn't match what they could afford to do. Hence, I believe, this is why JC was ousted and the company is now ran by the main investment company (who I feel wants their investment back). The game has had its life and soul gutted out of it, and with every "improvement" it takes another little piece of itself away.

 

When the announcement came that this game was going to be released, I'm pretty sure we as the community, were in the unanimous agreement that it was way too soon. The game was undercooked and needed a lot more time before it was ready. Any development company who wanted their undercooked product to survive would of released it as an early access product. However, Novaquark is a business ran by an investment company who wants to recoup. Keeping the game in another few years of beta or early access wasn't going to make them anywhere near the money needed to recoup. With no new investment, there was only one possible course of action, throw it out the door and see if it sinks or swims. Unfortunately they forgot to teach it how to swim or provide any floatation aids.

 

I don't want to be one of those doomsayers who, when they're not happy with the state of the game will immediately declare "zomg, this game is dead!" But It saddens me to say that, that is what I now believe. It died sometime ago when Novaquark realised that under the budget they currently have that there was no way they could afford the server costs to make it work as intended. It just took some of us longer than it should to see it for what it is.

 

So what is the immediate future? If you look at the current lack of content and updates, all that we're really getting is the completion of the supporter goals that should of been ready on release. Beyond that, as of writing this, nothing, no road map, nothing. No enthusiasm from Novaquark, no excitement, nothing. 

 

Can the game be saved? In short, no. To do this, the game would need a large, fresh influx of money, coupled with a long protracted development time to essentially re-release and reinvent itself. We are at the point of no return though. NQ, I think are running on fumes and they know it. Releasing the game, wiping and increasing the subscription prices and then going essentially dark speaks volumes to their future plans. 

 

I do wish it wasn't this way, and I am kicking myself a little for having to write one of these posts, but I felt it needed to be said. I know this game will still have its staunch defenders (I was one of them) who will go down fighting to the very last day. But this week the game broke me. As I logged in and did my busywork and realised I was barely able to cover my costs to keep the lights on with no real goal of progression any more, my love, passion and perceived potential for the game melted away. 

 

I appreciate my rantings here are purely opinion and conjecture, but if you take the time to take a long hard look at the past few years of this games development, the clues are there. Many of us already know it and made their comments known on the various channels. The tone and overall feelings of the community are at an all time low right now and that should tell you everything as to what the community is currently feeling. 

 

I'd love to be proved wrong, I still want the game to succeed, but my joy and passion, like many others past and present in this community, is gone and it would take a truly Herculean effort on the part of NQ to get it back again. However, judging by recent efforts I won't be holding my breath.

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45 minutes ago, Rokkur said:

Denial is strong when you love something. Welcome to the dark side brother! ❤️ 

 

It is indeed. I think others who have probably said the same thing as me over the years (and more succinctly), come from a place of passion and love for their game. It pains me, not to give up my constructs or community I've gotten to know, but the idea of what this was supposed to be.

 

Still it could be worse. I could of dumped too much cash into the idea of Star Citizen and still waiting for a good, fully working game to emerge.

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Good post.
 

The concept of DU has so much potential. It is so frustrating with how it has been managed over the years and now. The arrogance of NQ is shocking.
 

I am still enjoying DU and agree the future seems bleak. Little communication and changes that make a challenging game more so for new players, solos, and small orgs. I get that NQ is trying to slow progression. Problem is they are strangling players out, who can’t or can just barely keep up.

 

For now I plan to enjoy DU while it lasts. 

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So sad but so true. Many of us know it for years since NQ started the death spiral of limiting progression in order to save costs just to be forced to save even more costs because players are leaving. In a way I even admire NQ for keeping the game alive this way so long. But now the end is in sight. Given the current deflation I will not be able anymore to pay the tax for my tiles in two or three weeks. Than I will move my stuff to Heaven or Sanct and watch the game dying.

 

I really wish the game to survive, but I do not see how that should work. Who would invest the required cash into a project in such a desolate state? Looking at the company formerly known as Facebook it seems not even a good idea anymore to sell it as metaverse. What we need is a miracle and that's very unlikely.

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1 hour ago, Doombad said:

For now I plan to enjoy DU while it lasts. 

 

10 minutes ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

Than I will move my stuff to Heaven or Sanct and watch the game dying.

 

6 hours ago, Gunhand said:

and realised I was barely able to cover my costs to keep the lights on with no real goal of progression any more, my love, passion and perceived potential for the game melted away. 

 

I feel you all . seriously ...

 

I think the main reason for this is the game economy .

This is caused by the lack of bots and in combination of taxes causes players to get to sell their ore at any price just to keep their tiles or fullfill their any needs.

Also lack of money in an  increased money sink demand for starting the game in schems ,claim costs and other needs demanding money . Even sales.

We are looking for water in the desert and for apples on an orange tree . Completely wrong direction.

We tested this in a beta where everyone was flowing in a lots of cash generated by a different mission system and ore system .

Unless NQ is planning to adopt asteroids as the only main mining system and sometime remove mus , if they want to keep mus in game worthy they have to recalculate the whole maths about it . And as for me i dont have any serious problem at all because i use alts. But for someone who is just playing with one character is a major issue . that player can hold only 1 flower and thats it . Not really much that is... 

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Its extremely sad to hear others expressing the same thoughts. Trying to squeeze a little more joy out of the DU fun sponge that's rapidly run dry. 

 

It's very apparent to many that the strangling of small groups, solo and new players is making things very difficult and far be it from me to suggest that this may be somewhat intentional, but that's the thought at the forefront of my mind. 

 

If I was a fresh, new player to this game, I dread to think the difficulties they must face If I and many other experienced players are struggling to make headway in the game. 

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This game has been dying for a long time. Heck some of us started to see the patterns even before beta.

And the simple fact is that as long as NQ continues to behave like well.. NQ, then this game has no chance what so ever.

 

Or to quote Albert Einstein

Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results

 

And by now it should be clear that the lights have been turned off at NQ for a long time. And the few people still actually working on DU are just punching in hours to get the next pay check for as long as possible, and nothing more. Or to be more precise, when looking at how NQ operates is seems like they have been doing this for years and not just lately.

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9 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

This game has been dying for a long time. Heck some of us started to see the patterns even before beta.

And the simple fact is that as long as NQ continues to behave like well.. NQ, then this game has no chance what so ever.

 

Or to quote Albert Einstein

Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results

 

And by now it should be clear that the lights have been turned off at NQ for a long time. And the few people still actually working on DU are just punching in hours to get the next pay check for as long as possible, and nothing more. Or to be more precise, when looking at how NQ operates is seems like they have been doing this for years and not just lately.

Some of the developers still care, more than just clocking in. If you actively work on a project as long as some of them have, and have had as much turmoil in development... can lead to some apathy. I do wish DU had a more cohesive dev-community interaction. Even when Starbase was going belly up and spooling development down, several devs stayed vocal with their community and it helped quell the blow a lot, as players & devs were on the same side within the community. NQ has had several people in their ranks take a Us vs Them attitude almost... with at one point the community manager passing off their duties to another because people were a bit unruly on discord... followed by several outspoken, but within rules people... being silenced/banned. Most of those people were/are huge fans of DU, and wanted to see the best of it and are dismayed at the direction.

Though for managment sake, once DU is "complete" and backer rewards are fully realized in the next couple patches, adding what was missing... if the game isn't gaining traction, and or- the investment backers don't see much reason to push it to gain traction.... they may cut costs to run things on a major skeleton crew- more so than they are now... and or move all resources onto their next project(internally at NQ if there is one, which has been hinted at by the CEO on linkedin) in hopes of it being successful. as there is still some hype in the metaverse space... even if Meta/Facebook has pooped the bed and spread it around for us to sleep in.

At some point investors weigh their current potential to recoup investment against the risk of operating at a loss, and loosing more capital. Is Nic and co feeling lucky? The "Smart" move is to release the product and let it "fly" on it's own, if it fails to take off.... juice it for whatever you can to recoup costs and keep it running if possible so you can continue the squeezing process. The "Bold" move is to double down, invest more into the project, and company, and take it to where it needs to be... for the arguably small potential that it will gain traction and become a commercial success.

Most investors go with the smart move, keep the company alive and kicking enough to keep the lights on, and to keep the "IP" fresh in case there is a potential buyer/interest/further opportunity which would mean downsizing staff to a point where subscriptions cover the cost of continued development and support. And taking a guess on the peak of 300 people playing today on steam, and no signs of a positive churn rate.... doesn't spell optimism. 

If you're a developer at NQ, if managment isn't reinvesting now, or open to doing what is needed to turn the game around and spend the years/time needed... it may be a sign that once things are buttoned up.... managment will cut staff. If the focus is on getting these next two patches out, and there is no internal roadmap going 1-2 years ahead for development... than the writing may be on the wall. Not like the higher-ups are going to be "real" with ya'll, when they decide to change gears it will be abrupt and may cause whiplash.

If by chance you are staff, and or managment(small chance they'll read this, I'm sure) please know DU as a game concept is amazing, and that with some serious TLC it can become great. If NQ doesn't figure out the formula, someone else within the gaming space will. DU is in the cradle still, congrats on the new baby NQ! But making a baby is the easy part, comparatively; now you have to raise it to maturity. It took FF14 3? years to self right the disaster of their initial launch till it became a "Realm Reborn", bringing in a new team to rewrite large portions of it, and new game engine.... Elder Scrolls Online was shaky at launch, they retooled nearly the entire flow of the game with the Tamriel One update, overhauling the core experince largely and saw major success after dropping their subscription... bringing in more money than skyrim?! Both games were largely critically panned at launch by players & critics, and both took $$,$$$,$$$.$$ after release to become the juggernauts they are now.

Developing a MMO's is hard. Developing a voxel based planetary/space scale MMO with a single-megashard is harder... A lot of us know what happened to Everquest Next :( Though to the company that cracks that nut, goes the spoils. This is dreamin' a bit.... Take the FF14 route, ditch the current engine, port tech to Unreal Engine now that it supports the tech needed for planet scale rendering out of the box and relaunch the game. Rewrite the entire thing, taking the lessons learned from this launch. Take the lessons learned from the the current version of DU, and DU it better, or someone else will.... eventually.

Heck, even Amazon & CD Project Red are moving to Unreal Engine 5 for some of their future projects... and CD Project Red & Amazon both have fully developed in-house engines they own outright. Finding competent devs that know and understand Unreal Engine is easy. Finding devs to work on the mess that is Unigine? Much harder, I'm sure.

Yours Truly, NotReally Aphelia- formerly known as "AphiIa" ;)

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15 minutes ago, NotReally ApheIia said:

Some of the developers still care, more than just clocking in. If you actively work on a project as long as some of them have, and have had as much turmoil in development... can lead to some apathy. I do wish DU had a more cohesive dev-community interaction. Even when Starbase was going belly up and spooling development down, several devs stayed vocal with their community and it helped quell the blow a lot, as players & devs were on the same side within the community. NQ has had several people in their ranks take a Us vs Them attitude almost... with at one point the community manager passing off their duties to another because people were a bit unruly on discord... followed by several outspoken, but within rules people... being silenced/banned. Most of those people were/are huge fans of DU, and wanted to see the best of it and are dismayed at the direction.

Though for managment sake, once DU is "complete" and backer rewards are fully realized in the next couple patches, adding what was missing... if the game isn't gaining traction, and or- the investment backers don't see much reason to push it to gain traction.... they may cut costs to run things on a major skeleton crew- more so than they are now... and or move all resources onto their next project(internally at NQ if there is one, which has been hinted at by the CEO on linkedin) in hopes of it being successful. as there is still some hype in the metaverse space... even if Meta/Facebook has pooped the bed and spread it around for us to sleep in.

At some point investors weigh their current potential to recoup investment against the risk of operating at a loss, and loosing more capital. Is Nic and co feeling lucky? The "Smart" move is to release the product and let it "fly" on it's own, if it fails to take off.... juice it for whatever you can to recoup costs and keep it running if possible so you can continue the squeezing process. The "Bold" move is to double down, invest more into the project, and company, and take it to where it needs to be... for the arguably small potential that it will gain traction and become a commercial success.

Most investors go with the smart move, keep the company alive and kicking enough to keep the lights on, and to keep the "IP" fresh in case there is a potential buyer/interest/further opportunity which would mean downsizing staff to a point where subscriptions cover the cost of continued development and support. And taking a guess on the peak of 300 people playing today on steam, and no signs of a positive churn rate.... doesn't spell optimism. 

If you're a developer at NQ, if managment isn't reinvesting now, or open to doing what is needed to turn the game around and spend the years/time needed... it may be a sign that once things are buttoned up.... managment will cut staff. If the focus is on getting these next two patches out, and there is no internal roadmap going 1-2 years ahead for development... than the writing may be on the wall. Not like the higher-ups are going to be "real" with ya'll, when they decide to change gears it will be abrupt and may cause whiplash.

If by chance you are staff, and or managment(small chance they'll read this, I'm sure) please know DU as a game concept is amazing, and that with some serious TLC it can become great. If NQ doesn't figure out the formula, someone else within the gaming space will. DU is in the cradle still, congrats on the new baby NQ! But making a baby is the easy part, comparatively; now you have to raise it to maturity. It took FF14 3? years to self right the disaster of their initial launch till it became a "Realm Reborn", bringing in a new team to rewrite large portions of it, and new game engine.... Elder Scrolls Online was shaky at launch, they retooled nearly the entire flow of the game with the Tamriel One update, overhauling the core experince largely and saw major success after dropping their subscription... bringing in more money than skyrim?! Both games were largely critically panned at launch by players & critics, and both took $$,$$$,$$$.$$ after release to become the juggernauts they are now.

Developing a MMO's is hard. Developing a voxel based planetary/space scale MMO with a single-megashard is harder... A lot of us know what happened to Everquest Next :( Though to the company that cracks that nut, goes the spoils. This is dreamin' a bit.... Take the FF14 route, ditch the current engine, port tech to Unreal Engine now that it supports the tech needed for planet scale rendering out of the box and relaunch the game. Rewrite the entire thing, taking the lessons learned from this launch. Take the lessons learned from the the current version of DU, and DU it better, or someone else will.... eventually.

Heck, even Amazon & CD Project Red are moving to Unreal Engine 5 for some of their future projects... and CD Project Red & Amazon both have fully developed in-house engines they own outright. Finding competent devs that know and understand Unreal Engine is easy. Finding devs to work on the mess that is Unigine? Much harder, I'm sure.

Yours Truly, NotReally Aphelia- formerly known as "AphiIa" ;)

I second this.  I would add that a number of the community members have made amazing suggestions that would all be possible with UE5.1.  You built it and we came.  Rebuild it with the help of your community and many, many, many more will come.  Or keep us in the dark while DU dries up.

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14 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

This game has been dying for a long time. Heck some of us started to see the patterns even before beta.

And the simple fact is that as long as NQ continues to behave like well.. NQ, then this game has no chance what so ever.

 

Or to quote Albert Einstein

Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results

 

And by now it should be clear that the lights have been turned off at NQ for a long time. And the few people still actually working on DU are just punching in hours to get the next pay check for as long as possible, and nothing more. Or to be more precise, when looking at how NQ operates is seems like they have been doing this for years and not just lately.

 

The patterns were indeed there and I saw them myself, but I like others chose to play the game with the blinders on. My moment of reality came when the game stopped being fun and sitting down to a session which should of been a fun escape, turned into something somewhat akin to that feeling you get when you have to get up for work in the morning.

 

3 hours ago, NotReally ApheIia said:

Some of the developers still care, more than just clocking in. If you actively work on a project as long as some of them have, and have had as much turmoil in development... can lead to some apathy.

 

I don't doubt they do. Any grassroots developer working on any project would have to have passion and a drive to want it to succeed and see people enjoying their work. The problems in many game developments is that the management and shareholders don't want to make some money, they want to make all of the money. 

 

3 hours ago, Wyndle said:

I second this.  I would add that a number of the community members have made amazing suggestions that would all be possible with UE5.1.  You built it and we came.  Rebuild it with the help of your community and many, many, many more will come.  Or keep us in the dark while DU dries up.

 

I did read in the past that UE just wasn't a capable engine for a voxel based MMO game of this type, whereas Unigine was. The functional problems that DU has with its architecture and infrastructure mainly come down to its server requirements. It would likely be solved by increasing its resources at cost which NQ don't want to make. They scaled back at the same time as the cost cutting measures when they realised how much the game was costing with AWS. 

 

To port the entire game over to UE and rebirth it would be a mammoth undertaking at insane cost and years more development. Even in the event that they decided this was a great idea and opened the idea up for crowdfunding and investment. How much goodwill has already been burned? Who would support a game that's been in protracted development all this time and mostly failed to deliver on its promises? Players wish they could do a No Mans Sky, or Final Fantasy, do a complete 180 and bring their game back from the dead. Novaquark and Dual Universe don't have that level of hype or playerbase to support anything close to that. 

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3 hours ago, Gunhand said:

 

The patterns were indeed there and I saw them myself, but I like others chose to play the game with the blinders on. My moment of reality came when the game stopped being fun and sitting down to a session which should of been a fun escape, turned into something somewhat akin to that feeling you get when you have to get up for work in the morning.

 

 

I don't doubt they do. Any grassroots developer working on any project would have to have passion and a drive to want it to succeed and see people enjoying their work. The problems in many game developments is that the management and shareholders don't want to make some money, they want to make all of the money. 

 

 

I did read in the past that UE just wasn't a capable engine for a voxel based MMO game of this type, whereas Unigine was. The functional problems that DU has with its architecture and infrastructure mainly come down to its server requirements. It would likely be solved by increasing its resources at cost which NQ don't want to make. They scaled back at the same time as the cost cutting measures when they realised how much the game was costing with AWS. 

 

To port the entire game over to UE and rebirth it would be a mammoth undertaking at insane cost and years more development. Even in the event that they decided this was a great idea and opened the idea up for crowdfunding and investment. How much goodwill has already been burned? Who would support a game that's been in protracted development all this time and mostly failed to deliver on its promises? Players wish they could do a No Mans Sky, or Final Fantasy, do a complete 180 and bring their game back from the dead. Novaquark and Dual Universe don't have that level of hype or playerbase to support anything close to that. 

Unreal 4 was what NQ turned down at one time for Unigine. During the dev process almost every game announced for unigine fails. It's a great simulation engine and for benchmarking, but it's largely the bottleneck for better performance  and I know tons of people are gobsmacked by the bad performance with modern gaming rigs. 

 

At the time Unigine was the only out of the box offering to do planet scale, I recall the demos when they first announced the engine. 

 

Since then though unreal engine 5.1 has come out, and with it the double floating point precision needed for planet scale. It won't fix their backend server issues, but it might finally give players a stable 60fps with modern equipment without heating your whole house. 

 

Though your point is strong, not like DU is backed by AAA studios with a mainstream established IP. Final Fantasy and elder scrolls are too big to fail. DU is a fun experiment by an amazing French guy with a dream and the idea presented to us without the person is hollowed out version of that in its place. 

 

I loved J.C's DU. I dont love the watered down version NQ has created. 

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4 hours ago, Gunhand said:

 

The patterns were indeed there and I saw them myself, but I like others chose to play the game with the blinders on. My moment of reality came when the game stopped being fun and sitting down to a session which should of been a fun escape, turned into something somewhat akin to that feeling you get when you have to get up for work in the morning.

 

 

I don't doubt they do. Any grassroots developer working on any project would have to have passion and a drive to want it to succeed and see people enjoying their work. The problems in many game developments is that the management and shareholders don't want to make some money, they want to make all of the money. 

 

 

I did read in the past that UE just wasn't a capable engine for a voxel based MMO game of this type, whereas Unigine was. The functional problems that DU has with its architecture and infrastructure mainly come down to its server requirements. It would likely be solved by increasing its resources at cost which NQ don't want to make. They scaled back at the same time as the cost cutting measures when they realised how much the game was costing with AWS. 

 

To port the entire game over to UE and rebirth it would be a mammoth undertaking at insane cost and years more development. Even in the event that they decided this was a great idea and opened the idea up for crowdfunding and investment. How much goodwill has already been burned? Who would support a game that's been in protracted development all this time and mostly failed to deliver on its promises? Players wish they could do a No Mans Sky, or Final Fantasy, do a complete 180 and bring their game back from the dead. Novaquark and Dual Universe don't have that level of hype or playerbase to support anything close to that. 

The building experience is still the best thing available in a multi-player flavor to date.  It is the tiny amount of lift for my wings as I scream toward the planet Burn-out when I discover my airbrakes aren't working for some reason.  Having seen examples of what Nanite can do right now, out of the box, it's only a matter of when (not if) DU's top spot gets sniped.  The first project to get true player cooperative building with UE5+ will likely become the brand name for the next generation of all gaming (i.e. Kleenex for tissue, Google for search, etc.)

 

1 hour ago, BlindingBright said:

Unreal 4 was what NQ turned down at one time for Unigine. During the dev process almost every game announced for unigine fails. It's a great simulation engine and for benchmarking, but it's largely the bottleneck for better performance  and I know tons of people are gobsmacked by the bad performance with modern gaming rigs. 

 

At the time Unigine was the only out of the box offering to do planet scale, I recall the demos when they first announced the engine. 

 

Since then though unreal engine 5.1 has come out, and with it the double floating point precision needed for planet scale. It won't fix their backend server issues, but it might finally give players a stable 60fps with modern equipment without heating your whole house. 

 

Though your point is strong, not like DU is backed by AAA studios with a mainstream established IP. Final Fantasy and elder scrolls are too big to fail. DU is a fun experiment by an amazing French guy with a dream and the idea presented to us without the person is hollowed out version of that in its place. 

 

I loved J.C's DU. I dont love the watered down version NQ has created. 

 

JC's heart was close to the mark, that's part of what attracted so much support.  I think the current management took the wrong aspects from the concept as being the key ingredients to JC's success when trying to cut the fat from the project.  The best scenes being on the cutting room floor just to fit a metric will hurt a film, just as cutting the life out of a gaming community will kill it.

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If they really want a natural economy to flow forth and drive the game there are several things that need to happen...

 

  1. Fix missions by limiting the amount of quanta that can enter the game through that mechanism.
  2. Get rid of ORE bots.
  3. Make ORE pools accessed by mining units run out over time. There needs to be a limit to the amount of ore.
  4. Release more systems to allow for new resources.
  5. Allow T3 asteroids in Safe Space. There doesn't need to be many but there needs to be some injection of all Tiers in Safe Zone space even if it is just a trickle.
  6. Don't reset asteroids once a week. Make the introduction continuous. There might be an upper limit like now (currently 380 asteroids but that could be either lower or higher) but if the limit has been reached cycle out old asteroids equal in number to the newly released ones.
  7. Remove the "Discovered" category of asteroids. They should be rumored and then some time period after being found (could be as little as an hour or as long as the current two hours) they would go straight to broadcast. Just because I have arrived at an asteroid in PVP space there shouldn't be an alarm to the pvp folk that someone just arrived at one.
  8. The broken mechanic of being able to stay logged on an an asteroid at the center and "see" avatar and every construct on the asteroid needs to be nerfed.
  9. The broken mechanic of being able to shoot through the asteroid needs to be nerfed. You should not be able to shoot constructs on the opposite side of asteroids except with MAYBE missiles. You should not be able to shoot constructs inside asteroids.

I am quite sure that there are many that will disagree with some or all of these suggestions. I also think I will have annoyed both miners and pvp folk.

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If you get rid of the Q-Faucets, you have to get rid of the sinks, too, or there won't be any currency available to keep an economy flowing. So Taxes and Schematic costs will have to go. Both of those have other-than-economic reasons to exist, so you need to solve those problems too.

 

Just making resources easier to get doesn't make an economy flow better, it just means that more people can go and get their own mats to make their own things.

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On 11/20/2022 at 9:01 AM, Wyndle said:

I second this.  I would add that a number of the community members have made amazing suggestions that would all be possible with UE5.1.  You built it and we came.  Rebuild it with the help of your community and many, many, many more will come.  Or keep us in the dark while DU dries up.

 

I'll Join you in this aswell, The community has ideas and passion, old players will probably return when the possibilities af the bright start are becoming possibilities again, you just need to ask the community, incorporate us.

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I have been playing since before 0.23.

I would have to say I am with the OP.

 

This game has been made into a huge Time Sink because the bean counters want more subs.

That is the wrong direction, subs come when people enjoy the game not the other way around.

But waiting 4 hours for a schematic to produce, 4 hours to make all the subs and 4 hours to make 1 or 2 of the main schematics and the time it may take to produce the schematics for the subs makes no sense. On top of that it may take me 600 days to acquire the abilities I need to get to any point I may desire.

There is no reward for crafting or doing anything in game aside from the stupid achievements.

 

In essence, the business model is killing the game.

 

v/r,

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It's really sad for me.  I am a type of gamer that always moves on to another after maybe a week of playing.  Since launch, I have over 8 days of playtime.  WAY more than any other game I own, and I own a few.  I always wondered what my dream game would be.  Something I could spend hours and get lost in.  THIS WAS IT!  Sadly, I have reached a point that I just don't want to play anymore.  I can't put my finger on why!  I think the economy has a lot to do with it.  I, for one, refuse to have alts.  If I can't play and sustain in a game with just one character, then I don't need to be playing it.  Now, I log in and see what my industry has made, then TRY to sell it so I can pay my taxes.  Most of the time the prices have dropped so much in the last day my items do not sell.  when they finally sell after I drop the prices to stay relevant, I have just enough to pay my flower taxes and re-fill on schems.  That is not a game I enjoy playing.  I don't know how it all can be fixed, but I'm just sad that my "Dream Game" is dying!

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DU would not be dying/is not dying but there have been developments that should be in alpha state but not on a released game. but all the features scrapped, things changed, wipe and all others just reminds us of the actual state this game is in.

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17 hours ago, KritterBizkit said:

 I, for one, refuse to have alts.  If I can't play and sustain in a game with just one character, then I don't need to be playing it.  

 

There was a guy (presumably, don't want to be gender specific, LOL) on here saying..."why do you losers need bot ore sales? Once they started to run out, I simply turned to missions... I only have FIVE alts, nothing silly... and I'm made a 100 million..."

 

Five... Nothing silly.


This is the the sort of players this game is catering to, currently.

 

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After all this time, I'm not sure that DU actually ever had "potential"...never in its history was there ever a real design plan. They never knew how to translate a vague collection of ideas into concrete game design. 

 

"JC's DU" is one reason why the game never materialized -- it was never real. It was always just illusion and fantasy conjured by someone that had never touched game development before.

 

NQ has made a lot of bad choices since JC left, but if they'd tried to adhere to "JC's vision" (whatever the heck that actually was), the game wouldn't have even made it to this sad state of release.

 

It'd have never escaped beta. If his vision and leadership was really so clear and great, the project would have moved forward and he wouldn't have gotten the boot. JC's inexperience is what set the foundation for the game's enduring problems. By the time they booted him, it was already too late to make up for wasted time and horrible foundations. 

 

In my opinion, fantasy and ambition are not the same as potential...for a product to have potential, it has to be grounded in reality.

 

Teleporting people across the planet isn't an idea with "potential", it's absurd and stupid because it isn't plausible. It's an idea without substance or detail on how that idea will actually work, conjured by someone with no technical experience in any relevant field. 

 

DU has always been the same way.

 

It was a random collection of ideas from someone with no game development experience that was designed to "sound good", but was never grounded in reality.

 

"Be whatever you want and build without limits in a single shard persistent online system" is not a real idea by itself. It's fantasy.

 

They sold people on it because they claimed to have cutting-edge tech that would somehow make it all work...I believed it in the start as many others did, but it's been apparent for a while now that this was not scalable tech -- it was something a smart but inexperienced PhD cooked up not understanding how to make things scale in the real world. 

 

Does the idea of DU still have merit? No...I'm not convinced it does, because I still don't know what that idea really means in the form of a detailed, cohesive, practical, and plausible design. 

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I was making ~50m daily with heavy industry production. Had around 10 people providing me with schematics for some profit. Ore price changes didn't phase me since i could adjust prices. The thing is what do i even do with all this money in this game? I have the ships i need. Do i build like a large expensive battleship for pvp? Oh wait that actually doesn't work in this game and all pvpers run around in small cores. Oh well i guess ill just buy ore at the current low prices. Kept buying ore and filling containers every day to just load it all up dump it on haven and unsub 😜

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17 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

After all this time, I'm not sure that DU actually ever had "potential"...never in its history was there ever a real design plan. They never knew how to translate a vague collection of ideas into concrete game design. 

 

"JC's DU" is one reason why the game never materialized -- it was never real. It was always just illusion and fantasy conjured by someone that had never touched game development before.

 

NQ has made a lot of bad choices since JC left, but if they'd tried to adhere to "JC's vision" (whatever the heck that actually was), the game wouldn't have even made it to this sad state of release.

 

It'd have never escaped beta. If his vision and leadership was really so clear and great, the project would have moved forward and he wouldn't have gotten the boot. JC's inexperience is what set the foundation for the game's enduring problems. By the time they booted him, it was already too late to make up for wasted time and horrible foundations. 

 

In my opinion, fantasy and ambition are not the same as potential...for a product to have potential, it has to be grounded in reality.

 

Teleporting people across the planet isn't an idea with "potential", it's absurd and stupid because it isn't plausible. It's an idea without substance or detail on how that idea will actually work, conjured by someone with no technical experience in any relevant field. 

 

DU has always been the same way.

 

It was a random collection of ideas from someone with no game development experience that was designed to "sound good", but was never grounded in reality.

 

"Be whatever you want and build without limits in a single shard persistent online system" is not a real idea by itself. It's fantasy.

 

They sold people on it because they claimed to have cutting-edge tech that would somehow make it all work...I believed it in the start as many others did, but it's been apparent for a while now that this was not scalable tech -- it was something a smart but inexperienced PhD cooked up not understanding how to make things scale in the real world. 

 

Does the idea of DU still have merit? No...I'm not convinced it does, because I still don't know what that idea really means in the form of a detailed, cohesive, practical, and plausible design. 

Have you ever experienced being "in the zone" or had a sudden realization about something that makes perfect sense but you can't explain where the idea came from or the details or why it works?  That was a part of JC's vision for DU.  You can't ask a bean counter to streamline something when nobody understands how or why that version worked in the first place. Once you start pulling those strings the whole dream begins to unravel and more often than not cannot be stopped, much less put back together in any meaningful way.

 

Most of the potential that I perceived in DU came from the passion of the other players despite what the devs were doing.  With each game changing patch that potential was chiseled away, eventually revealing a hollow shell and then that was further reduced so that it looked like a child pressing shards of broken pottery into mud to make a 2D representation of the pot the shards came from.

 

The voxel building system here is amazing.  The single shard world is really helpful but not the end-all, be-all that it should have been.  The community has been the soul of the game thus far but even that well has been poisoned repeatedly with no sign of change of tactics to speak of.

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I think on more than one occasion JC was quoted as having a vision as something akin to Ready Player One. Which feasibly could exist in some form, but wouldn't work thanks to the nature of human psychology (or more precisely gamer psychology). Wherein gamers (tm) tend to have, broadly, a singular mentality to acquire wealth, notoriety, power or just to grief their fellow player. The idea itself of the "Metaverse" is just something humans aren't actually ready for. Anyone who was around at the dawn of this connected internet society was full of hope and potential to this new level of connected sharing of information that would free us from constraints. Now we just have this hellscape, ruled my advertising, misinformation and massive corporations intent on harvesting as much information as possible.

 

The idea of what DU was supposed to be and judging by what we have already, was perfectly feasible with the right developers, a boat load of cash and a dash of luck. Whether it would work is another matter entirely. 

 

 

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Frankly the "Ready player one" vision is the best thing NQ could come up with to safe the metaverse, built large portals on districts to jump between gameconcepts, DU being one of them and for all i care, SIMS or, a battleroyal clone another or a Hello Kitty mmo, but Something to keep this vision alive. And if i can come up with it why can't they?

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