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Only a return from one player among others


Knight-Sevy

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I take a few moments to inform (if whoever is interested in the information) that I am suspending the subscription of another of my alt accounts.
 

I had already suspended one of my 3 accounts, I had made the feedback on the PTS during the update and the highly insufficient balancing of the PvP. This was the reaction to the still haughty and disdainful behavior of the Chief Game Designer at Novaquark towards his community (in this case PvP).
 

The additional blow in the back leading me to delete the subscription of another account, is the fact that NQ allowed the bug exploit to occur allowing a group of players to remove a beacon while it was submitted to the seat mechanics. This is simply unacceptable and disgusting to the highest degree.
 

The icing on the cake is the disastrous communication regarding April 1st. I usually have enough humor for this sort of thing, but I couldn't help but cringe.
You could have at least had the presence of mind to teaser (however minimal) your new PvE features.
 

This post is not for free bashing. I just wanted to share as an adult and in all honesty my current feelings.
 

Indeed I always keep an account that retains access to the game.
But I have little hope left.

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The beacon exploit thing reminds me of the time when they gave everyone cheap schematics in beta and just let them keep them  because taking them back was too hard.

 

I mean, it should be really obvious that this was dodgy and really easy to find where the beacon went.  It's not like there are many of them in the game.  And surely it should be really easy to see who ran the maintenance unit on there.

 

This is not just going to go away, everyone will remember that the second strongest PvP group in the game cheated to avoid losing the most expensive item in the game and NQ just let them get away with it, just like they let people keep all those schematics.

 

Of course looking back at the schematic thing now it seems fairly obvious that they had already decided to wipe the game and were therefore only prepared to go so far to keep things running.  It makes me wonder what decisions they have made about the current game if they won't put in the effort to take that beacon back?  It's a far cry from the NQ in the first month of release swinging the ban hammer for exploits ....

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2 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

It makes me wonder what decisions they have made about the current game if they won't put in the effort to take that beacon back?  It's a far cry from the NQ in the first month of release swinging the ban hammer for exploits ....

 

I think it's pretty clear that they decided to stop major development of DU and no longer care what decisions are made about it one way or the other...

 

This is an MMO with a DAU count likely in the hundreds (optimistically) after 6+ months of release...there is no practical business reason to keep developing DU, and they've basically said as much through job postings and confirming that they are working on another game project

 

If you were running an MMO that was successful (or that you believed would be successful one day), you wouldn't spend your very limited runway on another project. 

 

I don't know why people expect that NQ is actually working on DU in any meaningful way -- the reality that they are working on other projects makes DU's fate rather clear to me...considering they lack the resources to make even this game, there's no feasible way they can be continuing serious dev of DU alongside whatever other project is in the works. 

 

Anything said otherwise is, IMO, just stringing people along for limited sub revenue. 

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Meh. I was sorta over the PVP during end of beta when 5? People got the last shot on an alien core.... with a screenshot confirming my kill. Only for NQ to give the prize to someone else, and, not tell me why that had happened or how they could verify it was them that got the kill. 

 

Add to the other PVP exploits, including, at the time I quit during launch, figuring out you could still 'bug' and track a players ship. 

 

The only time NQ has quickly acted on a major issue was when it would be easy to fix... like the malformed URL's causing people's clients to crash. Had a support staff member locked out of their account as the game would crash everytime they logged in to test my report. In that case NQ eas able to patch it within 24 hours.

 

It was super easy to fix. The majority of DU's exploits are far more complex... for reference,, no other MMO have I encountered so many exploits, or have had to report as many issues.(and have been in quite a few closed/open mmo betas) 

 

I had been banned/silenced before for pointing out the truth and testing their system.  

 

On top of that, still surprised nobody cared when I mentioned that resource duplication on release was/is an issue. It's not hyperbole. I gave up trying to help NQ after having to wait weeks to get a DSAT replacement as their servers ate our groups during launch, we would have been first to space.... they didn't value my time as a player, nor a tester, so why should I continue to give them free labor in terms of testing? Actually, not free labour, paying to /work/ for them. 

 

If they had a bug bounty/exploit program I'd have been rich. They don't, so, they can go kick rocks like support told me to in their silence. 

 

What's the point in playing an MMO with rampant exploits, small community, and a dev team that has moved onto other things? 

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8 minutes ago, BlindingBright said:

What's the point in playing an MMO with rampant exploits, small community, and a dev team that has moved onto other things? 

 

The only point to playing is to throw money at NQ so they can spend it elsewhere 🤷‍♂️  Not exactly the most honest way to run a studio, but I guess that's how they approach PR in general. 

 

As for their other project, here's what their CEO posted a few hours ago:

 

image.png.638bfee0cb9cdc63aa4959f26508bf64.png

 

NQ's higher ups don't view DU the same as players.

 

To them, it's still a stroke of genius and all about "breaking boundaries" and innovation. This is how web3/crypto people think, though -- they don't care about use case or implementation or game design or anything else that exists in the real world. These sorts can't distinguish between "innovative" and "good" -- novelty isn't always intelligent. 

 

This general lack of humility is why NQ's next venture will turn out no different than their previous one. They still don't understand why game design matters more than tech or innovation...and it's shocking to me that they'd actually work on another game with this mindset, having learned nothing from the last 8 years of failure. 

 

If all you can see is how great you are, you'll never learn from past mistakes -- and NQ has shown over and over that they don't learn from past mistakes. 

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2 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

The only point to playing is to throw money at NQ so they can spend it elsewhere 🤷‍♂️  Not exactly the most honest way to run a studio, but I guess that's how they approach PR in general. 

 

As for their other project, here's what their CEO posted a few hours ago:

 

image.png.638bfee0cb9cdc63aa4959f26508bf64.png

 

NQ's higher ups don't view DU the same as players.

 

To them, it's still a stroke of genius and all about "breaking boundaries" and innovation. This is how web3/crypto people think, though -- they don't care about use case or implementation or game design or anything else that exists in the real world. These sorts can't distinguish between "innovative" and "good" -- novelty isn't always intelligent. 

 

This general lack of humility is why NQ's next venture will turn out no different than their previous one. They still don't understand why game design matters more than tech or innovation...and it's shocking to me that they'd actually work on another game with this mindset, having learned nothing from the last 8 years of failure. 

 

If all you can see is how great you are, you'll never learn from past mistakes -- and NQ has shown over and over that they don't learn from past mistakes. 

Moving their tech to the Unreal Engine looks like learning to me. If I had an educated guess they're going to be developing a new game/project using voxels with it, and possibly package their server and voxel tech as plug-ins. 

 

Though ideally I'd love to see a proper Dual Unrealverse vs whatever 3D Blogging Metaverse they may have hinted at in the past... just not sure we're going to see much development going forward on DU proper. 

 

Every CEO's job, is to essentially put on a strong face and best foot forward, even when slaughtering a product and taking parts of it for nee projects... its apart of the double-speak they have to perform for their jobs... 

 

Though most wish he'd say 'We're going to push the boundaries even further with our newly released product, Dual Universe.  With excitement we take things in new directions as we further develop out a living, breathing, metaverse for all to enjoy. Development takes time, its worth the wait when you see the magic were working on!'

 

Idk, they've more or less confirmed the new projects are not related to DU. So any/all hype for them steering the ship into better waters is sorta dead. That being said, I am still interested to see where NQ takes things... 

 

Though... in the landscape of LARGE game devs shuttering live service games heavily the past several months doesn't bode well for the industry at large. 

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Even with additional $$$ likely pumped from investors/owners, I really doubt they have a lot of money to waste another 8 years. So new project(s) likely be on cheaper and much faster (in bad sense) side, trying to capitalize on DU salvage and relatively easily achievable fancy graphics from UE.

 

So again - promising everything to everyone, long talks about revolutionary tech, fake trailers like with DU. And lame result at the end.

 

I kinda skeptical, that integrity that was somewhere lost for years now will be suddenly found for A B C. And something really changes with NQ.

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, RugesV said:

Only saving grace for a new product is not many have heard about the last product. 

 

If they seriously change new project theme and audience, like medieval_cube_building_game_for_kids or some other stuff like this, new victims organically will be very little interested in sad story of DU. Like: space game for nerds? Ok.

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So they probably want to make a game that fills a hole in a gaming landscape that has no holes to fill specially in the current shitty state of the world. 

 

The only meta large numbers of players probably are interested in would be SIMS 5 online with more possibilities and less limitations.

 

and there you have it, less limitations. 

 

Unless NQ learns to make something with less to none limitations just skip the next version, its abit NCSoft, create release kill/sell to gameforge.

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17 hours ago, RugesV said:

Only saving grace for a new product is not many have heard about the last product. 

Eh, Seam Reviews are hard to bury. Any game NQ releases on steam will be under their name, and the only other release will be Dual Universe. 

 

I still find it funny that on launch they changed the logo and arguably added a 'flatline' symbol to it... letting people know it'd be dead on arrival. If that wasn't the largest moment of a designer's subconscious breaking through... it'd be intentional. 

 

It's weird for NQ to lean into their 'Voxel Techinology' when they arguably have none... they have no patents for it?, and rendering voxels into a mesh isnt..isn't... new. 

 

And the server side technology that they DO have patents on... has never worked at scale and is arguably a failure in their one released product that takes advantage of the concept. 

 

The only other thing they really have, is the IP for Dual Universe... and they're letting that coast off into the distance. 

 

Really only coming back here to complain as I still want what NQ promised of DU... and the lack of that existing in the market, is sadge. Feels backwards to abandon that concept and make /Yet Another Metaverse Product/ that nobody besides crypto bros and futurists with a boner for Snow Crash wants. 

 

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8 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

Eh, Seam Reviews are hard to bury. Any game NQ releases on steam will be under their name, and the only other release will be Dual Universe. 

 

I still find it funny that on launch they changed the logo and arguably added a 'flatline' symbol to it... letting people know it'd be dead on arrival. If that wasn't the largest moment of a designer's subconscious breaking through... it'd be intentional. 

 

It's weird for NQ to lean into their 'Voxel Techinology' when they arguably have none... they have no patents for it?, and rendering voxels into a mesh isnt..isn't... new. 

 

And the server side technology that they DO have patents on... has never worked at scale and is arguably a failure in their one released product that takes advantage of the concept. 

 

The only other thing they really have, is the IP for Dual Universe... and they're letting that coast off into the distance. 

 

Really only coming back here to complain as I still want what NQ promised of DU... and the lack of that existing in the market, is sadge. Feels backwards to abandon that concept and make /Yet Another Metaverse Product/ that nobody besides crypto bros and futurists with a boner for Snow Crash wants. 

 

Considering they are using epics anti cheat. I would guess they would release on Epic instead of steam.  Allot easier to hide your follies over there too.  One of the reasons I will never buy a game on Epic. 

 

As far as steam goes. Ratings are huge.  It can make or break your game. How many rando games have you bought because it had overwhelming positive reviews? How many games have you bypassed because of negative reviews?  For reference:

  • 95 - 99% : Overhwelmingly Positive.
  • 94 - 80% : Very Positive.
  • 80 - 99% + few reviews: Positive.
  • 70 - 79% : Mostly Positive.
  • 40 - 69% : Mixed.
  • 20? - 39% : Mostly Negative.
  • 0 - 39% + rew reviews: Negative.
  • 0 - 19% : Very Negative.

 

And when you consider half the games on steam are rated very positive or above. Games that dont reach this mark are typically bad and you should skip them. Its a great platform for good games to be released on, reaching out to 69 million daily gamers.  But if you want to reach that hundred of thousand to million of copies sold mark. You gotta have something that is rated good, Is a cheap initial purchase, and has good performance on medium and low systems. 

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On 4/7/2023 at 6:27 AM, RugesV said:

Considering they are using epics anti cheat. I would guess they would release on Epic instead of steam.  Allot easier to hide your follies over there too.  One of the reasons I will never buy a game on Epic. 

 

Yes + Epic Store has another sweet difference (for NQ) from Steam:

 

You can publish products that support blockchain, NFT, or cryptocurrency to the Epic Games Store as long as those products adhere to specific policies regarding blockchain technology.

 

-  - -

 

In a letter to the 27 EU finance ministers, the industry is concerned about the consequences of the future legislation.
The response from Web3 will not have dragged. Less than a month after the proposal of two amendments to the European Parliament tightening the legislation on cryptos (one of them was adopted), 46 bosses and organizations representing the Web3 have sent a letter to the 27 ministers of finance of the European Union to question them on their consequences. 

In the two-page document, the crypto lobby calls on the EU, among other things, not to impose rules that go beyond the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing body...

 

among the signatories >>> Nicolas Granatino (Novaquark)

 

I almost sure they try to pull it off in their ''new projects'' in one form or another.

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On 4/8/2023 at 1:40 AM, le_souriceau said:

 

Yes + Epic Store has another sweet difference (for NQ) from Steam:

 

You can publish products that support blockchain, NFT, or cryptocurrency to the Epic Games Store as long as those products adhere to specific policies regarding blockchain technology.

 

-  - -

 

In a letter to the 27 EU finance ministers, the industry is concerned about the consequences of the future legislation.
The response from Web3 will not have dragged. Less than a month after the proposal of two amendments to the European Parliament tightening the legislation on cryptos (one of them was adopted), 46 bosses and organizations representing the Web3 have sent a letter to the 27 ministers of finance of the European Union to question them on their consequences. 

In the two-page document, the crypto lobby calls on the EU, among other things, not to impose rules that go beyond the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing body...

 

among the signatories >>> Nicolas Granatino (Novaquark)

 

I almost sure they try to pull it off in their ''new projects'' in one form or another.

Considering the insane amount of scams and issues in Crypto I hope they pass more legislation. I haven't met a single average person that Crypto has impacted positively... the few people I knew who invested lost A LOT, lost most of it. 

 

I'm all for a NFT Crypto game, just don't taint it by trying to tie it into an unregulated financial service, aka coins 4 cash. And if game companies did that, they wouldn't need to sign that letter or worry about financial regulations. Nothing stops them from selling traditional MTX tied to an item on the block chain to ensure authenticity. It only gets dicey when they add the ability to cash out tokens for money... that invites all the money laundering and other financial crimes. 

 

'It's a fun game that also makes you money' - Logan Paul, founder of Crypto Zoo game/scam. 

 

Crypto bros have lead sheep to the largest scams in the history of human civilization. You just have to tell the sheep to hodl, and they won't know your fleecing them, such a neat trick.

 

"By number of Ponzi schemes there are way more in crypto, kinda per capita, than in other places." - Sam Bankman Fried

 

Hey, didn't NQ just spend years to deliver a game that wasn't as advertised? With kickstarter items still not shipped on a game that launched last year? With many customers calling it a scam because of these and many other valid issues? NQ will fit right in then.  

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2 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

I'm all for a NFT Crypto game, just don't taint it by trying to tie it into an unregulated financial service, aka coins 4 cash.

 

While it is technically true that NFT does not directly tie into something with a monetary value, there is an established connection there in the eyes of most people.

And I have a hard time believing that companies (and especially NQ) would want to make a NFT game/whatever simply because it is "cool for players".

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2 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

And I have a hard time believing that companies (and especially NQ) would want to make a NFT game/whatever simply because it is "cool for players".

 

I think they see opening, opportunity here, because even with their half-alive tech and overall meager capacity, they will be still miles of ahead all typical metaverse scammers, who usually barely have anything at hands at all beyond google map and random collection of unity store assets. 

 

So its makes real sense to try it in this... league, so to say.

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20 hours ago, le_souriceau said:

 

I think they see opening, opportunity here, because even with their half-alive tech and overall meager capacity, they will be still miles of ahead all typical metaverse scammers, who usually barely have anything at hands at all beyond google map and random collection of unity store assets. 

 

So its makes real sense to try it in this... league, so to say.

Miles ahead in some ways. The issue is their server tech doesn't scale, and their current voxel system is... insanely data heavy, storing mesh files for each LOD, and each construct being it's own model... this is partly why DU doesn't work. 

 

Going to unreal, if they're using Nanite... can least drop down to a single mesh/vector file, without multiple LOD meshes needed. NQ never really made good on just storing vector data of constructs, if they had been able to do that their data and server performance would arguably be muuuuuch better.

 

Either way, my point is while they have some experience their past approach was... filled with tech debt that they powered through under multiple CEO's.... they really don't have much to offer in the space.

 

Other projects have already started proving, with real users in a live demo the ability to have hundreds/thousands connected in the same area.... and there are tons of unreal projects working with voxels. NQ is late to the game arguably, and while they have some experience... idk.. if they have the technical capability to pull it off and are expecting unreal engine to do all the heavy lifting. 

 

I'd like to be pleasantly surprised by whatever they end up releasing next. While I'm burned by them for how they handled DU, they still attempted one of the more ambitious projects in the MMO landscape currently. Sometimes failure isn't the end, but a stepping stone to future success. 

 

Either way, I still wish we had gotten the DU we were promised. That game would have been cool. 

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19 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

Going to unreal, if they're using Nanite... can least drop down to a single mesh/vector file, without multiple LOD meshes needed. NQ never really made good on just storing vector data of constructs, if they had been able to do that their data and server performance would arguably be muuuuuch better.

 

Unfortunately, I doubt they'll use Nanite for a number of reasons.

 

First, it doesn't support any sort of mesh deformation -- even skeletal animation -- no matter static or dynamic. That makes it harder for a voxel-style game, but maybe they can work around it. 

Second, it doesn't support translucent materials (yet); that's harder to work around with a UGC-oriented game. 

Third, it doesn't scale as well when dealing with large quantities of distinct meshes (which is likely in a voxel game) because of how it has to optimize meshes on the GPU. 

 

I'm hardly an expert on the ins and outs of Nanite, but the idea behind it isn't new and like most every tech, it has trade-offs and caveats. Regardless, moving to Unreal definitely emphasizes that Unigen2 wasn't the right choice, haha! 

 

The issue I have is that NQ doesn't seem to understand what "content" actually means. They think UGC in DU is all the ships and buildings players have made, but that's not really content... 

 

The content in DU is the sandbox itself -- that's the engagement point and always has been. The constructs people make are merely assets, the actual content is the creative process in making those things. NQ still doesn't seem to get this...and with how obsessed their leadership (CEO and investors) are with web3/UGC concepts, I'm doubtful they've learned their lessons with DU. 

 

Like many cryptobro types, they tend to lean into things even harder in the face of failure: "oh, the issue with DU is that it doesn't have enough UGC"! So they believe empowering players with more tools to build content for them is still the right approach. A literal version of Anarchy Online I guess? 

 

No one wants to turn the Google Play store into an MMO, but that's basically what the metaverse imagines.

 

A mess of content you pay for piecemeal (they are hiring a FTP monetization expert this time around) with no real standards -- and enjoy doing the work to search out good content on your own time and expense.  

 

Yeah, I wonder why these metaverse concepts fail...? 🤔 

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1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

 

Unfortunately, I doubt they'll use Nanite for a number of reasons.

 

First, it doesn't support any sort of mesh deformation -- even skeletal animation -- no matter static or dynamic. That makes it harder for a voxel-style game, but maybe they can work around it. 

Second, it doesn't support translucent materials (yet); that's harder to work around with a UGC-oriented game. 

Third, it doesn't scale as well when dealing with large quantities of distinct meshes (which is likely in a voxel game) because of how it has to optimize meshes on the GPU. 

 

I'm hardly an expert on the ins and outs of Nanite, but the idea behind it isn't new and like most every tech, it has trade-offs and caveats. Regardless, moving to Unreal definitely emphasizes that Unigen2 wasn't the right choice, haha! 

 

The issue I have is that NQ doesn't seem to understand what "content" actually means. They think UGC in DU is all the ships and buildings players have made, but that's not really content... 

 

The content in DU is the sandbox itself -- that's the engagement point and always has been. The constructs people make are merely assets, the actual content is the creative process in making those things. NQ still doesn't seem to get this...and with how obsessed their leadership (CEO and investors) are with web3/UGC concepts, I'm doubtful they've learned their lessons with DU. 

 

Like many cryptobro types, they tend to lean into things even harder in the face of failure: "oh, the issue with DU is that it doesn't have enough UGC"! So they believe empowering players with more tools to build content for them is still the right approach. A literal version of Anarchy Online I guess? 

 

No one wants to turn the Google Play store into an MMO, but that's basically what the metaverse imagines.

 

A mess of content you pay for piecemeal (they are hiring a FTP monetization expert this time around) with no real standards -- and enjoy doing the work to search out good content on your own time and expense.  

 

Yeah, I wonder why these metaverse concepts fail...? 🤔 

Fairly sure Nanite can work with translucent structures, or least partially, as it now supports trees, grass, etc. And it may be as simple as turning off nanite on a mesh firing deformation and turning it back on, but won't hold my breathe and haven't tried it. 

 

The best examples of the metaverse as a concept do not lean into it in marketing. Example, Roblocks and Fortnite, heck even VR Chat. All of those are succesful and I'd argue early examples of metaverses in the /traditional/ sense... and also why I have stated NQ is behind the rat race.

 

The concepts that fail are largely coin backed money grabs, people get into them for investment vs fun, and it ruins the games community as the first sign of struggle things collapse.

 

I still feel Blockchain items in MMO's should be the default, along with in game currency, if only to help track cheating and fraud. Yeah it is not a complete fix, but it'd go a long way. But the player shouldn't even know, besides maybe seeing an authenticity number for items. It saddens me that so many scam artists have ruined a solid technical concept. 

 

But you are right, the issue comes down to 'content' in all of those examples developers are empowered to do more than just make neat looking meshes, but actually create things with them... for others to enjoy and partake in. DU lacks in the content you can partake in/create with user generated meshes... and has a history of removing the few things we could do. (I had a lot of fun setting up misson waypoints and operating a multi planet delivery service for others, not viable anymore due to game changes.. one example)

 

 

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2 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

I still feel Blockchain items in MMO's should be the default, along with in game currency, if only to help track cheating and fraud.

Blockchains make sense for decentralised systems. But MMO's are usually hosted by a vendor with a central server or server grid constituting the single source of truth. In this case it is much better to permit and log all transactions server-side without excessive encryption.

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On 4/11/2023 at 9:22 AM, Maxim Kammerer said:

Blockchains make sense for decentralised systems. But MMO's are usually hosted by a vendor with a central server or server grid constituting the single source of truth. In this case it is much better to permit and log all transactions server-side without excessive encryption.

While I agree with you, every MMO beta/launch I've been apart of has suffered hard to track exploits regarding currency, and in game items... especially at launch. the 'standard' way of doing it, while can work has not worked in the 20ish years I've been playing MMO's. The last two 'new' mmo's I've beta'd through launch are DU and New World, both of which suffered from major exploits at launch... New World exploits just got more coverage as it had an actual playerbase. 

 

I quit DU largely after coming across how to do resource duplication, and realizing NQ had no proper way to track it or the items created through it. Also... why was I gonna grind for a game that has so many issues like that? When someone can just exploit wealth into existence. 

 

A proper chain of custody, along with a public ledger, would allow the general public, aka players to sniff out abusers much easier... and it'd make it easier to track for issues with money laundering, gold selling, and of course exploits. All of which a MMO devs needs to be aware of, and many don't put neatly enough development time into it ahead of launch. 

 

I'm not saying it'd stop exploiting or resource duping .. just that it could go a long way to reducing, tracking, and dealing with offenders. I'm sure a lot can be done with just checking database calls and logs, though from what I've seen it hasn't historically been enough.

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3 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

I quit DU largely after coming across how to do resource duplication, and realizing NQ had no proper way to track it or the items created through it. Also... why was I gonna grind for a game that has so many issues like that? When someone can just exploit wealth into existence. 

 

You probably missed this chapter of clown story, but eventually (like 9 month after?) they KINDA attacked dupers, riping some most fat and lazy ones, who just sit on some weird duped gigantic dupe-cubes literaly (i seen screenshots, like caves full of such cubes, maybe even have one still...). But at this point economy was totally ruined and most ''bad'' people closed ''shop'', exiting with RMT quite nice (several thousands euro). But NQ never bothered tho too much, because anyway wipe (and generally game fate) was decided almost with Beta start, or at least NY.

 

https://postimg.cc/686dqLWD

 

I tried to tell people, like, you doomed to be wiped because of this, but they not listened.

 

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3 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

While I agree with you, every MMO beta/launch I've been apart of has suffered hard to track exploits regarding currency, and in game items...

The technology to prevent that without blockchains is there. It is standard for online banking, credit cards and even small online shops. Money duplication is pretty much non-existing. The only way to "cheat" here is to hack accounts and steal existing money (unless you are a bank that creates checkbook money, but that is another story). If MMOs have problems with exploits than not by missing technology but by bad design and programming. Block chains without proper implementation wouldn't solve this problem. And whoever can implement them properly would also be able to do it the traditional way, which is much faster and cheaper.

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16 minutes ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

And whoever can implement them properly would also be able to do it the traditional way, which is much faster and cheaper.

 

This.. Every operating in a game like this is by definition possible to log, and a game company has all the information about players and every operation they do by default as a consequence of hosting the MMO game. Adding blockchain on top of this would mostly only add complexity for data that is already there.

 

So NQ not dealing with the exploits was nothing but indifference from their side.

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19 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

The technology to prevent that without blockchains is there. It is standard for online banking, credit cards and even small online shops. Money duplication is pretty much non-existing. The only way to "cheat" here is to hack accounts and steal existing money (unless you are a bank that creates checkbook money, but that is another story). If MMOs have problems with exploits than not by missing technology but by bad design and programming. Block chains without proper implementation wouldn't solve this problem. And whoever can implement them properly would also be able to do it the traditional way, which is much faster and cheaper.

 

And with burning a lot less carbon just for validating items for an MMO...somehow people still think blockchain is no big deal for the waste it produces, as if computers use no energy. 

 

Plus, we've seen ample issues with mistakes in smart contracts, stolen tokens, or hacked exchanges that drastically undermine the general idea that consumers ought to "own" their own data or that blockchain is inherently more secure than centralized systems. 

 

Blockchain does have use cases, don't get me wrong, but I don't think this is a great use case compared to centralized systems. 

 

23 hours ago, BlindingBright said:

the 'standard' way of doing it, while can work has not worked in the 20ish years I've been playing MMO's.

 

By and large, the standard way of doing things does work for every MMO on the market, though...

 

MMOs don't have "strict" controls because devs don't give a crap. Ultimately, they are successful because they are massively multiplayer games, and the masses care a lot less about exploits than you'd think, especially in PvE-oriented games.

 

The truth is that dev time spent "locking this down" is better invested in new content and general stability. So long as things don't get too out of control, it's more efficient to patch the few edge cases that give a few players some unfair advantage after-the-fact...because the vast majority won't care. 

 

It's about more than blockchain, it's about changing your whole QA focus to emphasize security and anti-fraud, when that's not really the biggest issue that faces any MMO.

 

The number one driver of churn is lack of content, not fraud. MMOs aren't banks, they don't need to be, and they aren't designed with "foolproof" security because that's not their priority. 

 

TLDR: Patching exploits quickly is better (commercially) than altering your whole system design or QA pipeline to prevent them in advance 100%

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