number of players connected

[Zeddrick]

On 3/26/2023 at 4:08 PM, BlindingBright said:

 

 

If I wanted to take a break from DU, depending on your constructs/spread could need to spend hours dismantling, transporting, and storing raw materials your starter tile... a lot of /work/ to take a break. 

 

But the alternative is worse, right?  The game puts everyone into a shared space and if people are able to claim bits of that space and then disappear forever (like they could in beta) the result is going to be wasteland around all of the premium real-estate because nobody will ever have a reason to give back a market 6 tile, high quality mining tile, etc.  They will just leave the game with those in HQ mode in case they ever want to come back.  Rich players can just buy a DAC, use it to sub a new toon for 1 month, give it some HQ tiles and then unsub it so they can hold a very large number of tiles, thereby inflating the value of tiles and supporting their DAC purchases.

The maintenance unit does make it easier now to take things apart, although if you have a huge amount of stuff then yeah, that's still work.  Perhaps people with huge holdings are better off selling them or handing over their org to someone who still plays when taking a break?  And isn't that better too?  Do we really want a load of orgs run by people who aren't even bothering to subscribe any more?

 

At the moment though I don't think anyone has to worry about what will happen to their stuff if they take a 3 month break....

[le_souriceau]

8 hours ago, RugesV said:

The one guy is doing more then the entire NQ team. So either the team is incompetent, Or the team is one guy, or the team is working on not DU.

 

 

Probably all this to some degree. 

 

NQ never was fast or productive to begin with, enough to say, that game in active development since 2016. And still, at best, early level Beta feature-wise.

 

After JC left, they mobilized a bit (prob under orders of new leadership) to produce what become "release" version. Then resources were pulled back to other project, leaving DU with some skeleton crew with goal to cover the retreat, so to say.

 

I think we all, players and devs, now reached some mentally apathic phase of "we know that you know".

 

 

 

[Aaron Cain]

Just take the break and everything gets deleted, frankly is there any reason to come back from a break in the current state?

 

As long as we cannot rebuild civilization as promoted this game has a serious issue with playability.

[BlindingBright]

7 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

But the alternative is worse, right?  The game puts everyone into a shared space and if people are able to claim bits of that space and then disappear forever (like they could in beta) the result is going to be wasteland around all of the premium real-estate because nobody will ever have a reason to give back a market 6 tile, high quality mining tile, etc.  They will just leave the game with those in HQ mode in case they ever want to come back.  Rich players can just buy a DAC, use it to sub a new toon for 1 month, give it some HQ tiles and then unsub it so they can hold a very large number of tiles, thereby inflating the value of tiles and supporting their DAC purchases.

The maintenance unit does make it easier now to take things apart, although if you have a huge amount of stuff then yeah, that's still work.  Perhaps people with huge holdings are better off selling them or handing over their org to someone who still plays when taking a break?  And isn't that better too?  Do we really want a load of orgs run by people who aren't even bothering to subscribe any more?

 

At the moment though I don't think anyone has to worry about what will happen to their stuff if they take a 3 month break....

 

No, the alternative is not what we had... it is what we should have had: Each construct gets a magic BP that is sent to a market container/inventory of the players construct upon canceling their account. To retrieve a ship, redeploy bp, for a static, move it to a container and then fly yo final placedown spot.... this isn't rocket science or the most difficult thing to implement. No permanent HQ tiles/placed constructs.

 

Same should have been done for the wipe. NQ had/has the ability to do it too, I've seen these types of BP's used on the PTS in Beta. This would have allowed highly sought after tiles to be made free, and players to largely not loose their hard grinded for stuff, nor require them to spend hours to spin down their game.... 

 

NQ didn't do it... because they thought the current option offers better gameplay, or... as I suspect did it so they could more easily sanitize their Database on launch. 

 

And the wipe was for nothing really. I found and reported resource duplication exploits week 1 of launch, along with a handful of other exploits.. then stopped playing after NQ went silent on it. Came back weeks later, still an issue... then sorta gave up mentally on the game.

 

Server still lags worse than a pay to win minecraft server.

 

So I guess I should be one of them trolls that gaslights the community and push for NQ to do a seasonal wipe of their game for balance reasons while stating 'Nq NeVeR sAiD nO WiPEs' as many trolls did, even when proven wrong. My account was briefly banned(and unbanned after finding I didn't break NDA) for posting a statement NQ made in Alpha stating they would not wipe, and outlining magic BP's if they /had/ to.  Paired with the video posted earlier.... tired of people gaslighting(not directed at you Zed) 

 

 

[blundertwink]

1 hour ago, BlindingBright said:

 

So I guess I should be one of them trolls that gaslights the community

 

Even those trolls are mostly gone by now...they once insisted  that "Steam means nothing" and that the game was actually growing without any real explanation. 

 

Steam is now under 100 DAUs and there hasn't been a post on the reddit sub in weeks -- typically it's single digit numbers online there anymore. 

 

If there are still die-hard fans that insist that the game is growing, they are few. 

 

Yet some will still talk about how things will change "when Territory War comes" like someone waiting for Godot, even as NQ has said very clearly "hey, we're actually working on another game".

 

It's a weird brand of loyalty to me; I don't judge people that like this game in its current form and want it to keep going, but when they become borderline hostile at facing fact, it does become hilarious. 

[Zeddrick]

3 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

 

No, the alternative is not what we had... it is what we should have had: Each construct gets a magic BP that is sent to a market container/inventory of the players construct upon canceling their account. To retrieve a ship, redeploy bp, for a static, move it to a container and then fly yo final placedown spot.... this isn't rocket science or the most difficult thing to implement. No permanent HQ tiles/placed constructs.

 

I enjoyed the whole requisition thing when it was first done.  It was good content and DU wouldn't be the only game to make you lose your stuff if you stop playing without putting it away correctly.  Given the problems with people losing constructs due to org construct slots and it being hard to see that I think a magic BP would be better actually.

 

I did enjoy the post wipe for a while, it was fun building back up again and it did get a lot of people back into the game who hadn't played in a long time.  But I agree that it was a missed opportunity because, as many of us predicted before it, they just made all the same mistakes again and ended up right back in the same place as a result.

Perhaps they will try it again?

[Zeddrick]

1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

 

Yet some will still talk about how things will change "when Territory War comes" like someone waiting for Godot, even as NQ has said very clearly "hey, we're actually working on another game".

 

PVE will save us all!

[Maxim Kammerer]

10 minutes ago, Zeddrick said:

PVE will save us all!

Yup. Based on experiences with NQ implementations PVE will be everywhere to ensure that everybody can enjoy it without leaving the safe zone and the first iteration will be completely unbalanced so that the NPCs are invincible and one-shot-kill everything in sight and maybe even out of sight. Than DU will have no problems anymore.

[le_souriceau]

 

Well there is another metric, by the way -- recruitment section of forum pretty much dead for months. Even considering Discord overhelming gravity now, its kinda not normal.

[BlindingBright]

11 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

 

I enjoyed the whole requisition thing when it was first done.  It was good content and DU wouldn't be the only game to make you lose your stuff if you stop playing without putting it away correctly.  Given the problems with people losing constructs due to org construct slots and it being hard to see that I think a magic BP would be better actually.

 

I did enjoy the post wipe for a while, it was fun building back up again and it did get a lot of people back into the game who hadn't played in a long time.  But I agree that it was a missed opportunity because, as many of us predicted before it, they just made all the same mistakes again and ended up right back in the same place as a result.

Perhaps they will try it again?

 

If the playerbase stagnated even more... and they manage to add territory warfare, magic BP's, and PVE, rebalanced timers, Ore rates, etc .. essentially enough content for an 'expansion' worth of content... and those features alone are not enough to spark more players.... 

 

Then yes. A wipe is 'logical' as each time NQ has done it, has produced a spike in players...  even if alienating portions of their dedicated base.

 

Though I doubt NQ cares enough to put the resources needed to do that. Like I said, can see a path forward for the game still.

 

Curious what NQ will do next, and if they have enough investment to keep the doors open for DU while they pivot to their new project. 

[Maxim Kammerer]

9 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

Curious what NQ will do next, and if they have enough investment to keep the doors open for DU while they pivot to their new project. 

I expect them to keep DU running until the new product goes live. It makes a better impression when they have something to show.

[le_souriceau]

2 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

I expect them to keep DU running until the new product goes live. It makes a better impression when they have something to show.

 

Yes, exactly my idea.

 

They can even twist it in good way like "DU given out dev team valuable experience, this time we making best game ever".

[CptLoRes]

4 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

I expect them to keep DU running until the new product goes live.

They spent 8 years on DU, and it is still FAR from finished. So we are talking something like 2028ish for the next one then?

[le_souriceau]

1 hour ago, CptLoRes said:

They spent 8 years on DU, and it is still FAR from finished. So we are talking something like 2028ish for the next one then?

 

Hahaha, one! It seems to be not that simple already! Do you read their website recently?

 

Quote

Our first game, Dual Universe, is a great showcase of the power of voxels in the hands of players. And we’re just getting started.

 

Quote

<...> As a true precursor to the metaverse, the game world is fully editable, and the game experience is entirely driven by its players. <...>

 

We’re just getting started! We have several other projects in the works that leverage the power of our voxel technology.

 

 

 

 

[CptLoRes]

Quote

We have several other projects in the works ..

That's corporate speak for "we don't have any successful products and a clear path going forwards, so we are desperately trying to find the next big thing.."

[Aaron Cain]

13 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

They spent 8 years on DU, and it is still FAR from finished. So we are talking something like 2028ish for the next one then?

 

Your very positive

Probably they hope to be bought by meta or any other high class roller, well if they ever read these forums its endgame.

 

So expect these forums to de discontinued soon.

[Aaron Cain]

What they forget is that if you want to be succesfull in masses you dont need high quality perfect voxel works, you need simple everyone can do it from tech advanced to 12 year olds with no computer experience.

If you want what is said by NQ to actually work yu need to concider making it as simple as sims.  A sims on different worlds with a world portal in every home would do it, with direct acces to other worlds all fully build on a preset by the developer.  Just like in the first Lego movie, any subject you can use should be a world, syfy, western, film noir, Umbrella corp.....  The idea is as simple as that but the actual development will be hell if you want to do it from scratch and dont want to pay high server costs and are too cheapassed to build your own data center with high class server accessability.

 

In short, unless backed by someone like Gates or Musk you will have a hard time. You dont need the wizzkids as sups you need the bored house wives/men. And if you cannot develop for that group, forget it.

[CptLoRes]

On 3/30/2023 at 12:13 PM, Aaron Cain said:

So expect these forums to de discontinued soon.

I imagine it would be very hard to continue to pretend to be community driven anything, if they did that.

[blundertwink]

On 4/1/2023 at 12:01 PM, CptLoRes said:

I imagine it would be very hard to continue to pretend to be community driven anything, if they did that.

 

It wouldn't be a shock to me if the forums go offline because this is a paid/hosted service via Invision. 

 

As far as I can tell, it's a minimum of ~$89/month (annually).

 

It is hardly a big cost, but if NQ is going to spin these forums down, they'll likely wait until the end of the yearly billing term (assuming they are paying annually). 

 

As for "appearances"...who cares...? It isn't like they have any delusion that DU will be a success; if they did, they'd be investing resources in DU instead of their new game project, which they are actively hiring for. 

 

Frankly...I can't see any justification for keeping these forums open as a business. It is mostly just customer complaints (rightly so) and gives them no value at all. It isn't like they have ever used these forums to engage with their customers, collect feedback, or cultivate good PR. 

 

They could have saved themselves some money and spun these down years ago since they only have an interest in engaging via Discord...why should they keep these forums open...? 

[CptLoRes]

4 hours ago, blundertwink said:

As for "appearances"...who cares...? It isn't like they have any delusion that DU will be a success; if they did, they'd be investing resources in DU instead of their new game project, which they are actively hiring for.

Appearances is everything if your main plan for the future is to be sold to some large corp. or become the next big NFT/web3 something.. And I think that is probably the main reason why DU is still up and running, to maintain the appearance that their technology is functional.

[le_souriceau]

Yeah, i'm sure too, that they likely clear up here a bit, when times arrive for showing off new stuff (in year or so), so there will be more risk of new shiny fans meeting old undead ones.

 

But it will be softer clear, like "archiving" everything + harsher banning, to rip everyone talking not so positively.

 

In miniature it was already done prior this launch. I was knocked out until november for some nonsense from thin air, "disinformation''.

 

 

[Aaron Cain]

ah lol, indeed the fake news stuff where even regular news is named fake news if the news itself does not fall gently to those with power....

 

Well if they sent me back my money ill gently think about being less negative. untill then i just feel slightly scammed, not to incline a maybe indeed am, disclaimer blabla stuff

 

 

[CptLoRes]

On 3/28/2023 at 2:30 AM, RugesV said:

... personally I am not so concerned about the number of players.  Other then low player count means less money, less money means less money going into development and keeping the lights on. We know NQ can turn up and lower server performance. And the way the game has been running seems like they got it running at a bare minimum. 

 

I am more concerned about the lack of development. We are over half a year now on release, And the amount of features that have been added to the game are pretty lackluster.

 

Cause and effect. The low player count is mainly caused by the lack of progress in the game.

 

And this has been a major concern for almost as long as DU has excited, to the point that we talk about NQ development as if it is some alternative time domain.

 

And back in the early closed forums we had regular discussions about how slow/inefficient the NQ dev cycle was. And it became even more apparent in the early alpha period when NQ had 100+ (~150 at the peak) employees and still hardly any progress worth mentioning to show for it.

[blundertwink]

On 4/3/2023 at 3:24 PM, CptLoRes said:

Appearances is everything if your main plan for the future is to be sold to some large corp. or become the next big NFT/web3 something..

 

IMO, the ship has sailed on NQ finding a buyer. If they could have found such a buyer, they'd have sold by now. 

 

The first step in any due diligence would be to ask about revenue. Then it becomes very clear that DU doesn't exist as a product.

 

I've been through a few acquisitions working in the startup world -- IMO, it's the exception that these startups are acquired purely for tech. Tech on its own means very little to business people. They don't know its minutia and they don't care. They care that it can be monetized. That it works. 

 

Yeah, some companies do get acquired purely for tech, but that isn't the norm. Even big companies work like this -- if they're interested in the tech, they will wait until there's an actual customer base before an acquisition. You can review Google's acquisitions and see this easily -- their acquisitions are mostly for products, not merely tech. 

 

Otherwise, "good tech" is equivalent to a "good idea". It's been said that great ideas are worth pennies; great ideas with a real implementation are a different story. 

 

The way to prove that tech works is by creating a product. NQ hasn't done that yet. 

 

To put it another way...if you were a big company interested in acquiring NQ's tech or trademarks, why would you do it now...? Just wait until they are desperate and buy it for pennies because due diligence has revealed that they have no revenue. 

[CptLoRes]

I am not disagreeing at all. Ideas are worthless without a functional implementation.

 

But NQ's leadership still has to at least pretend that they have a plan for the future and act accordingly, be it NFT or getting bought or whatever. The alternative is to close doors and admit that all the invested money has been lost.