How would you have fixed DU ?

[Castanietzsche]

Hi
We pretty much all were hyped about the Dual Universe game concept but most of us actually abandonned the game.
What went wrong ?

IMO, the very fundamental gameplay bricks were very frustrating.

voxelmancy is counter-intuitive and crafting a ship is hard. having smooth surfaces, a canopy and a functionnal ship is so hard, most players chose to travel space with a space brick.

missions were also very frustrating (long, repetitive). the flight model is awesome but doing the same mission again and again is lame. As is mining. having to endure this grind every day to pay taxes is another frustration.

I think industry wasn't a great idea. interaction between real time and in-game time is frustrating. scan mining was a good idea on the paper but all tiles should behave the same. there shouldn't be T1, T2 or T3 ore.

[Zeddrick]

So for me, there were all sorts of small failures along the way (many in beta, some since) but they are all really just details next to the central problem.  One of the key features of the design for DU was that players would provide *all of the content*.  That meant that the game just needed to provide the mechanics and frameworks and literally everything else would be player driven.

 

Now players did actually try to do this.  There were people who created puzzles, etc for people to solve, created factions who fought each other, tried to build whole cities and many other interesting things.  The game and its developers seem to fight against content creators at every turn - recent examples being ship builders being put off because the stacked element checker means they have no way to know whether or not they are selling ships which will error 6 months later and warring factions being put off because nobody can shoot each other in battles.

 

Putting that aside though, I think that the one thing this game has proved beyond all doubt is that a game with solely player built content does not work.  You need to have some other content created by the game itself first in order to create gameplay loops that players can do when they aren't doing any group content.  A player needs to be able to just log in, play for 1/2 an hour, enjoy that time and profit from it.

So the one thing I would have done right away is add some background life to the game.  Put creatures in that might attack the player, make some basic challenges on the ground and in space, give players something to shoot at and reasons for doing so (protect base, get resources, whatever).  That would also give them a reason to team up, live in walled villages or space stations with a large shield, etc.  Some of this was in the original game design videos which were put out.  Then I would have built on it by adding more of a survival element to the game, adding PvE and NPCs to allow players to make their spaces more interesting.  I can build a huge space station but it has nobody in it at the moment, let me make it more interesting, make a bar where NPCs come and players I let in might be able to get missions from those NPCs.  I think that would have given players much more of a sense of shared purpose and struggle and a reason to come together into groups and play together.

 

As it is the game is, frankly, boring.  It's a game relying on player created content which literally deletes player created content on a regular basis made by a company which has no problem with breaking existing content and blaming that on the players trying to create it.  The world itself, and the constructs the game allows you to create, are fairly static and uninteresting too and it is difficult to come up with actual functions for many of the rooms in a construct.  I can add a bed but it has no use.  A lot of the cool stuff I see is just huge empty shell buildings with one or two rooms because people made them to look pretty rather than because they needed the space for things.

[CptLoRes]

4 hours ago, Castanietzsche said:

What went wrong ?

There is A LOT that went wrong. But the fundamental problem has always been communication.

 

Here is what NQ said during the kickstarter.

 

But as we all know, this lasted only a short time before they went the complete other way and started to ignore the community instead.

And remember this was back when the community was under NDA restrictions and played with the sole purpose of testing and giving feedback on early game play no less!

 

And NQ was never able to receive constructive criticism. If you played the cheerleader and told NQ how great they where, they would interact and be all smiles and thumbs up. But any type of constructive criticism or legitimate concerns with the game design and it would be radio silence or at best some boilerplate  "don't worry guys" and "we know best" type of answer. And when things would boil over and the entire community would rage, we would get some "we hear you" type of deal with promises to do better. All promises that where broken over and over again..

 

And that is why the community turned toxic against NQ, and things are the way they are today.

And it is basic math really. When testers are telling you that things aren't working, but you ignore them and keep doing the same things. Then chances are that you will fail.

 

[Zeddrick]

17 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

"The whole point of Novaquark is Dual Universe, and we are not doing anything else"

 

That aged well ...

[CptLoRes]

Yes.. It is morbidly fascinating how they managed to end up with the complete opposite of every core promise made.

 

And the answer to "How would you have fixed du?", would be to make NQ not behave like NQ.

[le_souriceau]

Too many lies. Its FUBAR at this point.

 

Only intrigue is to wait out what be final stroke of this drama -- I still waiting some "metaverse" ultra-cringe news, like now DU becomes google earth with own crypto and you can buy plot of land to build some voxel shit on it.

[Nemezir]

Get rid of Artificial Speed Limits. Makes the game boring to play -without alt-accounts. It’s hours of slow boating either to mission run, either to roid running. Slow boating is no activity. Besides VR a bit.

 

Ore distribution should me managed in regards of tiles. New players can’t find free t2+ tiles anymore. 
 

PVP should have different mechanics for hunting and defence including engine or warp disruption. But the Speer limit is a joke. 

 

DU needs more PVE content, better mission running, better looting with more interesting rewards, like skill books or skill points bonuses, etc. or discovery missions like if you explore a moon, a planet you can find something interesting. 
 

introduction of life system, like food, energy, rest - could improve skill point rate for example, if your char has a cozy environment. Like in RUST.  Could make housing, interior and base building more interesting. Energy farms, food farms could be possible and interior would get a function.

 

 

[Aaron Cain]

@Zeddrick Well written arguments, nothing to add there.

One other thing NQ did and keeps on doing to make it impossible for players to have fun is limit really everything. Almost everything that was possible in alpha has gotten a limitation of some kind, and those in general did make the game worse.

 

In general if the players need to generate content but the content generated is costing you too much to keep on a crippled server the road forward is severely blocked.

 

Game got so boring there is actually no reason to log in, frankly i rather go to work and have fun with my co-workers

[CptLoRes]

16 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Putting that aside though, I think that the one thing this game has proved beyond all doubt is that a game with solely player built content does not work.  You need to have some other content created by the game itself first in order to create gameplay loops that players can do when they aren't doing any group content.  A player needs to be able to just log in, play for 1/2 an hour, enjoy that time and profit from it.

This is the only part I slightly disagree with in your post. And the reason is that NQ never even came close to finish the tools we need to make proper content. So all they really proved was that a game with subpar content creation tools, will fail when they are supposed to be a content creation game.. Duh!

 

But I do agree that unless the players are given so much freedom that they could script fully interactive content (and we disregard all the potential exploit issues), then yes there must be some PVE elements to make a game fun and interesting for normal players.

 

And this is part of the problem. It would appear that the only players NQ have been listening to, are certain PVP focused org players who have gotten a foot inside the door. And the interests of those hardcore org players does not even remotely represent the needs and wants of the majority of normal players in DU who has a life outside the game..

 

[le_souriceau]

2 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

It would appear that the only players NQ have been listening to, are certain PVP focused org players who have gotten a foot inside the door...

 

Its reverse course of events, where NQ made such PvP, creating sort of negative natural selection, where only, at best, 1% of PvP base (99% left in different levels of disdain) still "enjoying" what they have. Its totally same with economic diehard players, who will grind 24/7 no matter what, saying everything is fine, even if they last 10 players in game world. 

 

I think you quite overestimating power of this tiny chicken foot in 100 tonns NQ door.

 

[RugesV]

Quote

How would you have fixed DU ?

Does it need fixing?  Do we know NQ's strategy? because at the end of the day we all know that DU just needs more development time. More features and content added and bug fixes.  Because NQ's strat might be to slow dev the next 4 years. And there is precedence for a strat like this. Look at NMS.  But it all depends on how long they can maintain the financial bleed until they become profitable.  And thats one thing we dont know. We dont know if the investors have already planned for this, or they are ok with that, or they are just ready to shut it down.  We can speculate, infact people have speculated with the web3d stuff. 

 

Now on to game play:

 

I said PVE is imperative for DU.  Eve would have never succeeded if it was only PVP or only PVE.   They are adding it (should have been added before release). There is a whole demographic of players to tap here. 

 

I said Farming. Not farming so players need to eat constantly. But farming so players sell the product to NPC markets. There is a whole demographic of players to tap here. 

 

Add more group activities. This one is harder to explain because you can spin it 1,000 ways. But when it comes down to it. there are very few group activities. You dont need friends to pilot or play engineers when your flying through atmosphere to fly or manage the equipment while your scooping up oxygen or hydrogen. Even with combat your more efficient going solo then you are with a group. 

[blundertwink]

In my opinion, DU was broken since its inception.

 

The way to "fix"it would have been to have a professional, well-considered design authored by someone with even a single day of experience in the industry. 

 

"Why did such a promising concept fail...?" Because it was a bad concept cooked up by someone with no experience in the field that had no clue how to create a good design, how to match that with engineering reality, or even the basics of how this genre works as a business. 

 

DU's failings (and it's utterly disconnected with reality to suggest that DU isn't failing or that they "just need more time") come from a poor design, a poor concept, and poor leadership early on. 

 

DU's current and past leadership are obsessed with the idea of UGC, user generated content -- they truly believe that games of the future will not ever "make content" and that's the player's job. They view DU as a "platform for content", not as a game. 

 

This perspective comes from a complete lack of experience or understanding of game design. They somehow don't realize that there's a massive difference between "assets" and "content" and this fundamental misunderstanding of what a video game even is means that NQ was never going to work as a game studio. 

 

They want to be the metaverse company...they keep insisting their vision of UGC as a platform is the future, but they don't even want to understand game design as a concept. 

 

DU and NQ failed because the company was always led by crypto-bro web3 enthusiasts -- and these types don't care about understanding technology or even knowing what a "use case" is.

 

They have a vision of the future and believe anyone that disagrees is braindead "luddite" that can't see the future as they do. 

 

Yes, JC is 100% in this crypto-bro boat...just look at his current employer. 

 

This idea that DU can "follow the same route as NMS" is so tired and boring and misunderstands completely this industry and how it works.

 

An example of one game having a comeback in very specific circumstances is not at all relevant to DU. There's no overlap in relevant circumstances between NMS and DU at all -- from the wildly different context of being a sub-based MMO to the fact that DU never had even a shred of initial popularity to the reality around their woefully incomplete design. 

 

Far, far, far more examples of games more similar to DU failing than staging some magic comeback after years of mysteriously-funded dev (yes you can see funding rounds and no NQ hasn't raised capital for years). 

[Thunderblaze]

Would've kept JC.

[le_souriceau]

On 3/13/2023 at 9:40 PM, blundertwink said:

They have a vision of the future and believe anyone that disagrees is braindead "luddite" that can't see the future as they do. 

 

Yes, JC is 100% in this crypto-bro boat...

 

Retrospectivly -- this unhealthy drift so to say is very noticeble in JCs interviews around game at start.

 

He was super-eager, almost shinning to talk about some abstract things how everything is revolutionary and full o possibilities (usual meta-crypto-bs), but more it was time to produce actual game, more sour his face was becoming (in last videous, last one especially).

 

 

[CptLoRes]

To me he looked more and more tired as worn out as time progressed.

And I would not envy anyone being in a leader position at NQ. Or any other position at that company for that matter..

[Aaron Cain]

Frankly, looking back to the start the main issue here is the servers, the ideas are still nice, the outcome is not. What did make the most difference? I believe its server stress, from day one till now.

 

All restricions should be returned, mining should be mining, ores should regrow, schematics scrapped and replaced with a working tech tree, industry real and the production cheap and abundant, this all to make the most stuff possible so nobody cares if their capital hip gets destroyed in all out war.  reintroduction of the ultra cores, and thats upto 2 km or larger, or better yet introduce core-less structure building.

Make industry dynamic, actually add the stargates And make the teleport systems be produceable to all.

Make it possible to actually have effective cities, so reintroduce html, also beds, chairs, showers need an actual, use, also homes should have a use. that way people come and actually feel like they have a life in DU, add a bit of Sims into DU. If NPC should be there make them automatically appear in cities and able to communicate, bond, etc by a impressive AI system.

Add other races but make them all playable, and then not some groce stuff, just popular stuf like androids, kitties, whatever

 

In short, maka a game we dont need npc other then simply social interaction, and maybe marry and get DU-kids with because we can actually all be what we want to be since servers dont restrict us, bring out those other solar systems, stop with the 3 HQ restriction and make plots buyable and selleble per plot, and stop taxes.

 

I can continue for hrs but well im not in game development, If you look at all other popular games and combine all the stuff there its about 5 minutes and you have anything you need  in a game. 

 

I still think this can be turned around, so NQ give me a call and lets see what I can DU for you now  Ill even DU it for free! I'm not into MMO gaming for over 30 years for nothing, my word is my bond.

 

So here an open invitation to invite me and more here to look at what can easely be done to turn the game around.

 

First Tip, open an event for modders to add functions to lifeless stuff that actually matters!

[le_souriceau]

8 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

Frankly, looking back to the start the main issue here is the servers, the ideas are still nice, the outcome is not. What did make the most difference? I believe its server stress, from day one till now.

 

I think its 50% servers (NQ money on them), 50% they not understanding their demography.

 

We talked over years many times about this. Its pretty much still social game with almost zero social tools. And community page just meme example, its 1000 more low dev effort things NQ never even considered.