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What happens now? space pebbles plz?


Shaman

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What is next for DU?
The new changes are OK at best and I really have no idea what steps NQ should take to improve gameplay or PvE in general with the limited budget they have.

  • Realistically, Real time PvE Combat where ships lock on and shoot back and everything will probably be completely off the table, as NPC ships will probably require a lot of code rewriting and dev effort to pull off, perhaps even months or years of work. It might happen but I'm not crossing fingers or anything, especially for ones where they fight back and lock on etc.
  • TW probably has the best chances, even with mediocre PVP, even on only one planet. This in my opinion is one of the better options but I think industry and territory mechanics need to be significantly improved to make sure that actual wars start instead of just 'asteroids, but its on a planet'. Although it might be worth it, TW might simply just take up too much dev time to be viable.

 

One idea I had for a while was to have asteroid fields that contained the same RGB pebbles you find on planets but in space and larger, this I could see as possible or even very easy to pull off depending on how NQ have coded rocks, although without ship mining equipment it would probably be a tedious and worthless endeavour, and as well as that you would get sick of it in like 30 minutes.

 

Perhaps you could just hack the current PvP system so that you shoot moving rocks full of ore (sneakily disguised core units spawned in by NQ) with a special type of mining "weapon" and bingo its almost like PvE combat. Then if you put these 'rocks' either in the PvP zone or in places with natural hazards i.e. rocks being hurled at you (i.e simple damage over time over a certain area) then you REALLY are getting somewhere, but then again that would probably take too long to get implemented properly...right?

 

Many people believe that what this game needs is 'risk and reward' without saying exactly what that is.

Does anyone else have any ideas on what exactly NQ could realistically pull off to improve PvE within a reasonable time frame?

Edited by Shaman
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The way im seeing it, NQ dont care much about the gameplay / in-depth mechanism of Dual Universe.

Dual Universe is more likely a sandbox to test their voxel technology in a "prod" environment. I believe in a progress on server stability and performance but not much in gameplay which is not related to voxel itself. It's sad but we will be stuck with "creative only" events for a while as people creation will be use as marketing product to promote the tech.

Don't be surprise if NQ devel their own "DU-Creators like" as possibilities catalog to show off to their own clients.

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12 hours ago, Koffye said:

I guess sommer 2023 you can espect something new?!

 

You are one very optimistic person.

 

If we call recycling a new feature and thats what we get after beta and all other features that are scrapped i think we will see alot more scrapped before summer.

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1 hour ago, Aaron Cain said:

 

You are one very optimistic person.

 

If we call recycling a new feature and thats what we get after beta and all other features that are scrapped i think we will see alot more scrapped before summer.


A little hope doesnt harm me :D

But indeed, maybe 1.3 is coming in summer and they will only re-releasing the Alien cores. Then you have won the bet

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Even if they threw in TW tomorrow, it wouldn't be enough to turn things around.

 

We're beyond the point where one big change alone would be impactful enough to make the game work. 

 

Consider that a vast majority of the new players that quickly churned in month 1 or 2 never tried PvP -- hell, most of them probably never made it to space.

 

Introducing a new PvP feature isn't going to magically make them come back...nor will it change the realities around new player engagement.

 

With NQ's track record, TW as a fresh feature will likely be horrible -- I can see it working against them for engagement until they slowly get around to patching, and that's assuming their brittle stack can even handle it at scale. 

 

As for NPCs....it just isn't possible. It takes them months to push out stupid features no one cares about like skins...it would take them years to refactor the game to the point where NPCs could work. I can't emphasize enough how slow their dev is and always has been, and this won't change. 

 

It won't change because the entirety of their Steam subscriber base is likely not even enough to pay one person a decent wage...long term, churn will only get worse, here. There's no evidence that they can or will scale the game outside of Steam -- either organically or with paid ads. 

 

The game has too many weaknesses for one thing to magically reverse its fate.

 

If NQ really wants to fix things, it needs a series of radical extremely risky ideas...because honestly things are bad enough that they've very little to lose. Playing it safe with small updates in the hopes that fixing tiny bugs or pushing more marketing will change things is not going to work.

 

Meanwhile, the CEO is off to London to talk about the metaverse...so I'm sure NQ will remain focused and do what it needs to do! /s 

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Here is my guess.

 

Many months from now once even NQ is forced to realize that nobody want's to play DU the way it is now, they will do some tweaks to the economy (surface ore, MU, schematics, tax, bots) in an effort to essentially turn back the clock and make players want to play again. And then with much fanfare they will release this as some major new version of DU.

 

And anyone who think we are going to get game changes that will make new interesting game loops any time soon (if ever), is in for some disappointment.

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4 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Here is my guess.

 

Many months from now once even NQ is forced to realize that nobody want's to play DU the way it is now, they will do some tweaks to the economy (surface ore, MU, schematics, tax, bots) in an effort to essentially turn back the clock and make players want to play again. And then with much fanfare they will release this as some major new version of DU.

 

And anyone who think we are going to get game changes that will make new interesting game loops any time soon (if ever), is in for some disappointment.


Next update: servers will close. You can tell by their terrible attempts to implement systems that either they themselves haven given up, or no longer have the resources to continue.

Either way GAME OVER

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1 minute ago, Rokkur said:


Next update: servers will close. You can tell by their terrible attempts to implement systems that either they themselves haven given up, or no longer have the resources to continue.

Either way GAME OVER

only real hope at the moment is that DU is locked in a deal with their investors to keep going on for another year or something, otherwise the game is toast.

it could be plausible that NQ is still being funded until all their promised features are released, half-assed at that for some sort of lawsuit damage control. I definitely believe MMO's like DU can turn around with enough time and money, or even sheer luck, no matter the circumstances, but I am starting to feel more and more that the game devs are just testing their investors patience until they eventually stop funding the project, which is a real shame. I still have hope but I would be lying if I said the situation wasn't looking bleak.

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Horrible launches can be corrected with dedication and perseverance from the game studio. No Mans Sky is the perfect example of a failed launch turning into a brilliant and well-supported game. The real question is does NQ have that kind of resolve? Currently, all signs point to no.

 

Some have said that NQ's problem is that it is a small studio. Well, Hello Games is also a small studio and they managed what everyone thought was impossible after their launch.

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9 hours ago, Shaman said:

only real hope at the moment is that DU is locked in a deal with their investors to keep going on for another year or something, otherwise the game is toast.

it could be plausible that NQ is still being funded until all their promised features are released, half-assed at that for some sort of lawsuit damage control. I definitely believe MMO's like DU can turn around with enough time and money, or even sheer luck, no matter the circumstances, but I am starting to feel more and more that the game devs are just testing their investors patience until they eventually stop funding the project, which is a real shame. I still have hope but I would be lying if I said the situation wasn't looking bleak.

Everything is actually more than it seems.
It is ungrateful to count other people's money, but we have been talking about our faith investments since the beginning of the Alpha test. To some extent, we are also investors without ownership of the product.
So.
What happens below is a very optimistic scenario, but still.
NQ is positioned as a small studio (more than 50 people in the profile), but we will count on the lower limit. Let it be 50.
We also remember that the developers are not in Africa and require a good salary.
Let it be 2,000 per person per month (before taxes). This is not much (I would even say a little).
We have a figure of 100,000. Providing an office, servers, renting premises, commissions for systems like Steam and others who accept payments, renting servers, etc. Again, optimistically double the amount.
We have a total of 200,000.
The cost of a monthly subscription for 1 character - let it be 15 dollars.
In total, we get that it takes 13,300 active accounts to keep everything afloat without third-party investment.
I am sure that people close to the gaming industry have figures of retaining projects that are close in spirit.
Now on Haven (where you MUST land and automatically order the tile 21,000 territories occupied).
Usually in the project after the first month of subscription, at best, one of 4 remains.
Many of the occupied territories are alpha and beta players with paid subscriptions. This money has already been spent.
To somehow talk about the future, you need 13,300 * 4 = 55,000 (with rounding) tiles on Haven. Then you can hope for some time of the life of the project.
We are not even close to those numbers.
I will not even rely on the numbers online in Steam (they can only be judged by the trend).
The danger is that if there is a cash gap, then with an insufficient number of subscriptions, any project very quickly slides into sunk losses.
For example, if there are 5,000 active records out of 13,300 required, then it turns out that someone should take $125,000 out of his pocket and put it on the table. Otherwise, the servers will turn off, there will be no light in the office or there will be no office.
In the first month you have -125,000. In the second -250,000, and so on.
Investors are not altruists to throw away such amounts every month.
With such losses, the project cannot live long.
As I wrote - the figures are more than optimistic.

 

Comparing with Sean Murray, you do not forget that a lot of people bought NMS pre-orders. Wikipedia says about 700,000 copies sold at launch. This is an unprecedented level of funding compared to what we have. Hello Games just had the resources to keep working hard.

 

Of course, I really hope that everything will be optimistic with DU... But my inner pessimist and paranoid says no. Even with meager open numbers and a calculator, I'm scared for the future of the game.

 

PS. To anticipate objections. At the moment, there is no cosmetics store in DU to have other sources of funding other than a subscription.

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1 hour ago, Koffye said:

They told in their stream, that the actually team is very small.  I guess the amount of developer in their team is under 10. A single digit number. Would explain the slow progress.

The fact that there are few people in the support team explains a lot.
But it does not eliminate the need to feed everyone else.
One option would be a third party project that is in development.
In this context, the prospects are even worse.
This means that when the situation with the alternative reaches the finish line, DU will simply be closed as a passive asset.

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14 hours ago, GeminiBrian said:

Some have said that NQ's problem is that it is a small studio. Well, Hello Games is also a small studio and they managed what everyone thought was impossible after their launch.

 

No man's Sky and similar games have an ocean of difference with DU...they had initial hype.

 

That's more than just marketing or ads, it was a momentum of popular interest that led to a huge initial release and enough gravity to re-engage customers years later.

 

The closest DU came to this was early, early in its life (just scroll to the very start of this forum and you'll see what I mean)...whatever hype that existed was sapped by long periods of dev with little to show in early playable versions. 

 

Also, let's be fair about what "small team" means for an MMO. A typical "theme park" MMO might have a budget of ~$200 million, easily (compared to NQ's ~$22 million).

It isn't so crazy to have budgets in the range of $500+ million for a modern MMO...

 

Sure, NQ isn't "indie" compared to single player games, but for the MMO genre...? They really are.  

 

Building a persistent MMO technically is vastly different than what Hello Games did with NMS -- there are many layers in NMS with absurd levels of complexity (that makes NQ's proc-gen look childish), but making a persistent, single shard MMO builder...?

 

It's so hard to scale something like this, it doesn't even make sense absent some "game changer" technology (which NQ asserted they had). 

 

My point is that DU has more than just a few problems with polish or gameplay...fixing those problems in an MMO is far harder, and earning back players is harder without an initial wave of popularity (and in general, because sub-based games require far more commitment to reengage). 

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NQ is not really a small company.

 

Maybe when they just started and had about 25 employees they could be considered a small indie, but they quickly grew and had at one point 170+ employees. And right now they are still 50-75 employees according to sites that track such things.

 

But by now it also seems obvious that DU is no longer NQ's main focus. By their own words they are not a game studio, but a metaverse company (whatever that means). And they have more then hinted that their are working on something else then DU.

 

So where does that leave DU?

 

The good news is that since DU is still very much considered the same as NQ in the public eye, and the only products they have to showcase their technology. My guess is that they can't just shut down DU without also hurting NQ in the process. So I think NQ will try to keep DU alive at least until they reach whatever 'metaversey' goal they are aiming for. Regardless of if DU makes money or not.

 

But this is also the bad news. Since NQ is clearly not making much (any?) money on DU and their main focus is elsewhere. It means they probably are more focused on keeping cost down then seriously putting a real effort into making DU a better game.

 

So that means a skeleton crew working on DU and a laser focus on keeping the server hosting cost as low as possible. And this fits very well with what we are seeing both with regard to type of game changes in patches and dev pace of said patches.

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2 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

By their own words they are not a game studio, but a metaverse company (whatever that means). And they have more then hinted that their are working on something else then DU.

 

So where does that leave DU?

 

Their CEO is in London right now at a metaverse convention.

 

His last public post mentioned the "Novaquark stack for 3D blogging", which seems to be the first time they've actually announced one of their other products (albeit without any other details). 

 

So...it's likely that the days of DU being NQ's only way to showcase their tech are nearing an end and he will announce more details at this convention.

 

My guess is that it will be tools aimed at other developers. Only guessing based on him labelling it as a "stack" (implying developer to developer business) and likely pitching it at the metaverse convention. 

 

I'm not optimistic that their continued all-in bets on the metaverse as a concept will pay off, but this is where the CEO is continuing to drive the company...

 

Honestly I don't know why any company would target web3 / blockchain / metaverse mavens as a customer base considering how quickly these scammy concepts have fallen out of favor, but that's just me.

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11 hours ago, ColonkinYT said:

Let it be 2,000 per person per month (before taxes). This is not much (I would even say a little).

 

 

Heh i assume your are calculating in US $, 2000 per month would not be far from what a part time intern gets per month in my part of EU

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1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

 

Their CEO is in London right now at a metaverse convention.

 

His last public post mentioned the "Novaquark stack for 3D blogging", which seems to be the first time they've actually announced one of their other products (albeit without any other details). 

 

So...it's likely that the days of DU being NQ's only way to showcase their tech are nearing an end and he will announce more details at this convention.

 

My guess is that it will be tools aimed at other developers. Only guessing based on him labelling it as a "stack" (implying developer to developer business) and likely pitching it at the metaverse convention. 

 

I'm not optimistic that their continued all-in bets on the metaverse as a concept will pay off, but this is where the CEO is continuing to drive the company...

 

Honestly I don't know why any company would target web3 / blockchain / metaverse mavens as a customer base considering how quickly these scammy concepts have fallen out of favor, but that's just me.

 

Link to source plz??

 

 

 

and also about what @ColonkinYT and @CptLoRes are saying I have seen that metric of 50 employees before and I am highly sceptical that this value is the true amount. Surely NQ wouldn't spend all that dev time on reducing server costs if they are going to pay their employees much more than that anyways, surely even a very inefficient server would'nt cost that much.

 

...unless, perhaps the CEO is trying to make the server tech look as fast as possible to attract buyers?

 

Coming to think of it it wouldn't take a stretch of the imagination that Dual Universe is becoming a front to the true backend tech they are trying to sell to investors.

Now thinking about it even more this makes sense to me given the fact that NQ appear to be making little to no effort to pay for ad campaigns of any kind... There might be some sort of skeleton crew of 10 employees working on DU while all the others work on server tech? just food for thought.

 

Edited by Shaman
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1 hour ago, Shaman said:

 

Link to source plz??

 

 

 

and also about what @ColonkinYT and @CptLoRes are saying I have seen that metric of 50 employees before and I am highly sceptical that this value is the true amount. Surely NQ wouldn't spend all that dev time on reducing server costs if they are going to pay their employees much more than that anyways, surely even a very inefficient server would'nt cost that much.

 

...unless, perhaps the CEO is trying to make the server tech look as fast as possible to attract buyers?

 

Coming to think of it it wouldn't take a stretch of the imagination that Dual Universe is becoming a front to the true backend tech they are trying to sell to investors.

Now thinking about it even more this makes sense to me given the fact that NQ appear to be making little to no effort to pay for ad campaigns of any kind... There might be some sort of skeleton crew of 10 employees working on DU while all the others work on server tech? just food for thought.

 

 

This came from the CEO's latest public LinkedIn posts -- I won't link it here, but it should be very easy to find. 

 

Honestly, I think NQ isn't doing paid ads because they know it won't have positive ROI. They tried it in beta and people just churned right away...

 

NQ is competing with AAA subscription MMOs that have the same sub price, except that many also have an initial purchase price. That radically changes the math around ROI with paid adverts and means the competition can vastly outbid NQ, especially since competitors probably have better retention. 

 

Also...if you acquire some "average gamer" with a flashy trailer advert that doesn't match the reality of the game, of course they will churn. 

 

Even free to play MMOs can probably outcompete DU when it comes to paid marketing...and with NQ not trying to cultivate any social media (having ignored it for years) and the game being essentially unwatchable on Twitch...there's not many marketing avenues available. 

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11 hours ago, Kurosawa said:

 

Heh i assume your are calculating in US $, 2000 per month would not be far from what a part time intern gets per month in my part of EU

I immediately wrote that my calculations are OPTIMISTIC.
😉
Probably very optimistic in terms of salaries! Again, you need to understand that in some countries the tax legislation heavily burdens business in terms of deductions.
In reality, the cost figures are 3-4 times higher.
But I didn't want to count on the upper limit.
The goal was to show the fact that if we consider DU as a standalone product, then tens of thousands of subscriptions are required to keep it afloat (not to mention profitable for investors).
After all, investors look not only at the average check per month. They also look at growth dynamics. Even if the product is still unprofitable.
But imagine a situation where you have a net subscription delta around zero (subscription renewal + new subscriptions - not subscription renewal). Or even negative. Here, even without a calculator, it is clear that the chances of a return on investment are very slim. Moreover, we do not forget about such a value as the lifetime of projects.

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10 hours ago, Shaman said:

 

Link to source plz??

 

 

 

and also about what @ColonkinYT and @CptLoRes are saying I have seen that metric of 50 employees before and I am highly sceptical that this value is the true amount. Surely NQ wouldn't spend all that dev time on reducing server costs if they are going to pay their employees much more than that anyways, surely even a very inefficient server would'nt cost that much.

 

...unless, perhaps the CEO is trying to make the server tech look as fast as possible to attract buyers?

 

Coming to think of it it wouldn't take a stretch of the imagination that Dual Universe is becoming a front to the true backend tech they are trying to sell to investors.

Now thinking about it even more this makes sense to me given the fact that NQ appear to be making little to no effort to pay for ad campaigns of any kind... There might be some sort of skeleton crew of 10 employees working on DU while all the others work on server tech? just food for thought.

 

When I figured out the numbers on a napkin, I omitted a lot. But I think the order of costs is about the same. First of all, the salaries of specialists in server technologies and game programming should be increased by a factor of 2. Plus, there are not only programmers. Game design, forum support, office team leader. And no matter how many people work specifically on DU, everyone needs to be fed.
If this game is used as a demonstration of technology, then we will never see global changes. As mentioned above, the main thing then will be maintenance and not development. I agree that external signs all point to a lack of resources. The pace of development was much faster during Alpha and early Beta.
For web 3 and the dreams of the CEO, I don't mind if it goes the way KEEN Software does. But this is unlikely to happen. The last year shows the opposite.

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