Is DU being actively developed? Is it NQ's main priority...?

[blundertwink]

DU has clearly faced many challenges in the last 8 years, and NQ deserves credit for trying to be novel in the MMO genre. It was never an easy undertaking, and I have to believe that the devs working on it did their best despite many difficult circumstances. 

 

That said, recent statements from the CEO strongly imply that NQ's main focus right now is on new projects (i.e. "3d Blogging", whatever that means).

 

Paired with a lack of any updates or roadmaps or even vague plans for the future, it seems to me that DU isn't going to be developed further, except maybe small fixes and optimizations. 

 

There can be no illusion that DU's release has not gained enough subs for the product to be sustainable as a subscription MMO, so I can't blame them if this is true. No one can reasonably expect them to keep shoveling money into a project if it isn't working. 

 

Of course, it's also fair to ask NQ to be honest about their priorities and the future of DU. If their new focus is to develop tooling for metaverse-related projects, okay...but I think it's important for players to know what they are buying with their subscription. 

 

Is this limited revenue going to support and grow DU, or other projects?
Is DU even being developed as NQ's main priority...? Or does it have limited resources such that big updates are unlikely?

Why should people keep subbing if NQ's leadership is clearly more keen on talking about metaverse BS...? If the leadership doesn't believe that DU is NQ's future, why should players believe in the future of the game? 

 

Is honesty with paying customers (some of whom have been loyal for nearly a decade) just not possible...?

 

I understand there's a business interest in pretending that the game is fine as they try to pitch other products...but it feel dishonest to be collecting sub money, using player creations to show off other products, all-the-while having no intent to continue full-scale development.

 

Of course I could be wildly off base and wrong...but what else should I think when the product has few players, no news about updates, and the only news from NQ's CEO is about how excited he is for new products...?

[Novidian]

You’ll never know, for the same reason they didn’t tell us about the wipe. They want to dangle the carrot in front of you as long as possible, right before they pull the rug out and hemorrhage more players (if not kill DU). 

 

It’s tragic. The game has potential to be great, even with its limitations. It can even be fun at times. I didn’t see myself coming back, but I did - I’m even considering a year sub. I WANT the game to survive, but I don’t see any signs they care at all.

 

3D-mf-blogging? I didn’t even know people still blogged. You want to attract an audience for the sustainable future, why not the multi billion dollar a year gaming industry? Not an emerging market inevitably dominated by FB/Apple/etc, that may not even have sufficient technology to support it within the next decade.

 

I couldn’t give 1mg of shit about the meta verse, blogging, or anything else. Just gaming. None of that other stuff will ever compete for my time or money. They do DU and us wrong, I’ll make it a point to rag on every other future endeavor they undertake out pure spite.

 

I’ve never had such an abundance of simultaneous contempt and hope for a single company, but here I am. The saddest thing is, all this frustration could be alleviated by simple communication. 

[blundertwink]

Obviously my timing was perfect, as they posted this about DU's future at a similar time. 

 

Of course, this doesn't really answer anything about DU's future or NQ's priorities other than confirming there's some level of dev still going on, even if it's nothing major.

 

It really isn't anything major on this list -- especially depending on the implementation specifics and pace of development. There's a lot of ground to make up between this list of future changes and the game being sustainable.

 

I'm still very skeptical full-scale dev is still going on, but I suppose they have every chance to make it clear with 1.3 and 1.4...

[GraXXoR]

Wow an update by NQ-Deckard. 

…on the forums not on Twitter or Discord. 
 

let’s see how many of the points on the list are minimum viable alpha product placeholders and how much actually gets fleshed out to a post-alpha level. 
 

there are a lot of nice things in the list. Top being PVE combat. And finally a construct disassembly option. And for me, at least, HOTAS support, since I’ve been wanting to put this to good use since neither DU nor NMS support it and I no longer play Elite Dangerous. 
 

 

While it is nice to actually hear a member of NQ say something, anything, it is going to take more than a single happy new year post to convince this player that the game is turning around. 

[blundertwink]

13 hours ago, Jinxed said:

there are a lot of nice things in the list. Top being PVE combat.

 

I'm of two minds about PvE content -- because clearly its needed, but it all depends on implementation and timing.

 

It's hard to celebrate something that was sorely needed pre-launch and hard to see how an invariably basic implementation will make a big difference, especially if we're talking about it dropping 5-6 months post-release at a minimum. 

 

13 hours ago, Jinxed said:

While it is nice to actually hear a member of NQ say something, anything, it is going to take more than a single happy new year post to convince this player that the game is turning around. 

 

True -- have to give credit when due!

 

At least they've finally outlined a plan, even if vague. Is it enough to reverse churn and grow the game...?

 

Even if the implementation behind each idea is solid, I'm not sure it would be...and again, if they aren't devoting the company to DU entirely, I don't think they will have the resources to make changes fast (or complete) enough to grow the game.

 

Timing is so critical for an new, subscription MMO...the longer they take to deploy updates, the fewer people they'll even retain with these improvements, never mind growing the subscription base...and if these improvements are all months and months out? It just won't be big enough changes fast enough, not for a subscription game. 

 

NQ has a heavy vested interest in DU's dev appearing to be business as usual, at least until the new ventures that the CEO has mentioned completely roll out.

 

Otherwise, any potential investors (or big customers if they go the B2B tooling route which is plausible) will have far less confidence in NQ and might even view such products as desperate pivots. 

 

I guess now the ball is in NQ's court and we just have to wait and see, but I'm not betting big on NQ's integrity or competence.

[le_souriceau]

2 hours ago, blundertwink said:

Timing is so critical for an new, subscription MMO...

 

Trick is DU isn't new by any stretch of imagination, whole dynamics with players base burn are like 7 years in making. So game closer to be old actually.

 

Other then this -- agree, its NQ chance to show something reasonably done for a change. PvE is years overdue, but I guess they only surrendered to it against "player driven" when there is no players left to drive anything.