Bring Back the DU We Love

[Sinjin]

I still LOVE THIS GAME and don't want to see it die.  Here are some easily implemented suggestions to bring DU back form the brink:

• Add some asteroids with mega nodes.  We miss those!  If you are the one who discovers it, you get double the amount of time before the roid gets broadcast.
• Unbalance some of the game.  Give our L-core ships some of their speed back!  Give some overall power back to airfoils and engines for getting off Alioth. No one was complaining loud enough about balance to keep some of the changes made in place.  The changes just made everyone mad.
• Schematics: You guys were solid until the .23 release when schematics came out.  I know it helps balance the game, but no one cared!  It was an improvement when you dropped schematic requirements off low tier items and introduced schematic containers, but everyone still hates them.  You said getting rid of them would be a tough job.  Ok, then drop the cost to dirt cheap and go back to only one schematic needed on a machine.  Needing repeated schematics in a machine is just dumb.  Who needs more than one set of blueprints to build things?
• Add something for us to aspire to.  DU really is my only game, so I don’t what that would be.  But there really is no purpose to DU.  I build stuff.  Then what?
• Bring back the bots.  The market is collapsing.  Bots in a limited form will help the small player.  There aren’t enough players in the game for me to sell enough things to keep afloat.
• Cut the weekly fee on territories by at least half.   Single players should pay no more than 100k.  You’ll have to figure out something else to deal with those to keep territories and don’t use them.  Perhaps set up a sliding scale based on your performance in the game.  But I can’t afford the weekly rate.  I don’t generate enough income.  I would LOVE to set up mining units, but the market is bottoming out bad.  It’s not worth the upkeep.
• Mining units… the upkeep is just irritating.  Simplify it and make the need to visit them less.
• Introduce clear voxels.  I have some weird window shapes to fill and the glass panels and canopy shapes just don’t cut it.
• Reconfigure the Large Dynamic cores for a 2nd style.   Don't need more voxels, just need them to be longer.  Make them thinner and longer would make A LOT of people happy.

I'm hopeful these are easy things to do and could be a sign of good faith to the player base.

 

Many will call me naïve or foolish for trying, but I don't care.  What do you say NQ?

[Sinjin]

Oh, and PLEASE... give us smaller radars or at least allow us to bury them again.  I need an large radar my ship, but I do not want that goofy looking thing on top.  It looks ridiculuous.

 

[CptLoRes]

We have been saying such thing for ever. Even before 0.23.

 

But the simple fact is that back when NQ could have made such changes, they chose not to. Or to be more precise, they made changes but not the ones we needed or wanted.

And right now they have so little man power and resources allocated to the game, I suspect they could not even if they wanted to..

 

So that ship sailed a long time ago I am afraid.

[Kurosawa]

DU is in an artificial coma. NQ is either to scare to pull the plug or they are trying to get funding / resources by doing other project.

 

At least that is my 50c based on what little we know

 

edit:

Oh and the shifted to far towards survival games vs open sandbox

Edited August 30, 2023 by Kurosawa

[blundertwink]

5 hours ago, Kurosawa said:

DU is in an artificial coma. NQ is either to scare to pull the plug or they are trying to get funding / resources by doing other project.

 

At least that is my 50c based on what little we know

 

edit:

Oh and the shifted to far towards survival games vs open sandbox

 

They've said many, many times that there are three projects in the works other than DU.

 

Just a few weeks ago the CEO mentioned that NQ still has just under 80 employees. If you look at the CEO's most recent posts, it's really clear they have already pivoted and  are focusing on new pitches, publishers, and investors. 

 

There's just no evidence that DU's dev is ongoing in any real way; I'd be surprised if there were even a dozen people still working on DU out of those 80. Based on the last few months of no real activity, it is likely even less than that. 

 

DU's dev is effectively dead...which is not a surprise as they have only managed to bleed players since launch (per the only stats we have). 

[Sinjin]

I know.  I get it.  Lost cause, maybe.  But no more time than it took me to write that, had to try.

[Wyndle]

On 8/30/2023 at 4:38 PM, blundertwink said:

There's just no evidence that DU's dev is ongoing in any real way; I'd be surprised if there were even a dozen people still working on DU out of those 80. Based on the last few months of no real activity, it is likely even less than that.

 

I've been thinking back to the recent events and dev activity in and out of the game.  I could only name about half a dozen visible so I concur with your estimate of roughly a dozen max bodies working on the sleep mode version we seem to have.  I've already decided that I can't justify spending more on the game now that my annual subs & DACs are dwindling to an end. 

 

If we had 1) a roadmap, and 2) visible signs of NQ trying to save DU financially AND technically I may change my mind.  Even a "free to play, micro-transaction cosmetics, and sub for premium" announcement would be a welcome improvement at this point.  I recall seeing a positive response from NQ when I got vocal about not having a cosmetic shop, but no sign of it since.  Even the king-daddy of MMOs, WoW, brought in a cosmetic shop while they were still growing but NQ/DU shows no outward sign of it even when it looks this dire.   (edit:  If the hold-up with cosmetics is durability/recycle then just give a pile of in-game cosmetic points equal to the element's purchase value upon recycle)

 

The fact that Web3 is/was a focus (even JC went on to other Web3 stuff) is troubling.  There are plenty of obvious scams out there but the warning signs I'm seeing with DU smell just as funky and off-putting.  This isn't the first time I have brought it up, yet we have only gotten vague assurances that we're not being duped or trolled.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Wyndle
Offering Suggestion to NQ

[Maxim Kammerer]

I think nothing can be "easily implemented" into DU anymore. Only way to save the game would be starting from scratch. But NQ can't do that and nobody else will take over. Even if NQ would allow using the idea for free, most investors would avoid a concept that failed so miserable. It's a pity about the wasted potential!

[Kolden]

I know this is almost a month old but i agree with just about everything from the OP. I really wish NQ would open up free to play, and bring in skills and cosmetic shops for cost. You cant get skills above level two if you arent a subscriber, you gain double the XP/m if youre subscribed. If you unsubscribe and play for free you lose your skills except the level 2 ones. Let us buy XP points, let us buy cosmetics. I would spend money on all this, but at this point with the player count dwindling and only major orgs holding the vast majority of tiles that can give an income it makes me wonder why I still play. I prefer to play as a solo player but do occasionally play with others but i prefer to just do my mining and industry. I miss mega nodes, I wish they still existed give me something to hunt down on asteroids. I miss seeing tons of people when i show up to market 6, now its just 1-2 of the same players each time i go there. F2P with micros I think would partially revive this game. People wanna try it out but they dont want to spend money on a game that they look at the forums and see its dying. I really wish NQ would interact with us a little more and give us some idea of whats to come. Im really afraid theyre going to pull the plug at the 1 year mark when all the prepurchased dacs run out. 

[CptLoRes]

Problem with free to play is that DU is hosted on cloud servers where player activity cost real money. In fact just flying over a planet is probably one of the most expensive (for NQ) operation you can do in the game, since it translates into a lot of voxel streaming from the cloud servers.

 

So each player joining for free will cost NQ real money, unless they repeatedly do enough micro transactions to offset the monthly server hosting cost.

 

And even if they did decide to make DU into F2P, it would take at least a year to implement micro transactions using the famously slow NQ 'dev time'.

And in the process they would of course find some strange and fundamentally wrong way of implementing micro transactions that players would not like at all. And those weird design choices would then go live regardless, because NQ would not have given us any details or asked for feedback on any of the changes until they where done making them. And by then it would be to late to make any substantial changes based on player feedback.

[Vazqez]

On 8/30/2023 at 2:15 AM, Sinjin said:

still LOVE THIS GAME and don't want to see it die.  Here are some easily implemented suggestions to bring DU back form the brink:

 

Just like the PVP mechanics are broken. Yes, and the mining mechanics are bad

 

1.The number of free fields should depend on your skill level.

2. respawn of resources should be added in the field occupied by the player.

Once every 7 days, the player should be able to re-scan the resources on the field. Such a scan reassigns the resources present on the field. for example
T1 x%
T2 x%
T3 x%
T4 x%
T5 X%

X% - means the chance of drawing a raw material according to its occurrence on a given planet.

 

3 Schemes are also a bad idea
  To do something, 1 diagram should be enough

But they should add the ability to improve this diagram so that it can be produced more efficiently and cheaper.

 

 

If NQ wants to, they can. The worst thing is that they want to, but they can't.

[blundertwink]

On 9/24/2023 at 6:40 AM, Vazqez said:

If NQ wants to, they can. The worst thing is that they want to, but they can't.

 

I don't know why anyone believes that they "want to" -- the CEO has made it clear that DU isn't a priority.

 

NQ still has nearly 80 employees (per a recent post) and have been hiring for a different game project (clearly advertised in their job posts) while DU's dev is permanently on ice. 

 

The game is already dead; no judgement for those that still play, but think about the reality.

 

It's still a somewhat new MMO with less than 2 years on the market, but there's no news about a major patch since 1.4 released months ago. This for a game with weekend peaks of maybe 50-60 concurrent players.

 

There's no evidence to suggest that major development is ongoing...and like a dead language, an MMO that doesn't get updates is a dead game no matter if some few people still play. 

[Tordan]

6 hours ago, blundertwink said:

This for a game with weekend peaks of maybe 50-60 concurrent players.

Assumption of facts not in evidence. 

[Dixiii]

On 9/25/2023 at 6:59 PM, blundertwink said:

There's no evidence to suggest that major development is ongoing...and like a dead language, an MMO that doesn't get updates is a dead game no matter if some few people still play. 

Updates? Hehe. How about at least fixes? They removed graphics post processing smoothing filter in February. That caused many problems: nothing visible in the night, too bright light sources, bloom do not work anymore, orange blinking lamps on factory units looks exactly like red passive lamp, and many many others. There was a lot of complains in discord, and they promised some fixes. I returned to game recently, in September, to see how it goes. To my disappointment - it's still same bad, and worse, since almost everyone gone, and as several people said about 50-60 players left in the game.

[blundertwink]

On 10/9/2023 at 1:07 PM, Dixiii said:

Updates? Hehe. How about at least fixes? They removed graphics post processing smoothing filter in February. That caused many problems: nothing visible in the night, too bright light sources, bloom do not work anymore, orange blinking lamps on factory units looks exactly like red passive lamp, and many many others. There was a lot of complains in discord, and they promised some fixes. I returned to game recently, in September, to see how it goes. To my disappointment - it's still same bad, and worse, since almost everyone gone, and as several people said about 50-60 players left in the game.

 

Those numbers are per Steam charts by the way, not just random stuff I'm making up. It's likely there's several hundred people left, but rarely more than 50-60 online at the same time....in other words, at any given time, there's not even enough people in this "MMO" to do a round of Fortnite. 

 

At this point it's basically fact that they aren't developing the game...the leadership is still very focused on UGC/web3 concepts and that's where they are investing their time and money.

 

I do think there's some very committed devs that still do some patches/fixes based on the patch notes, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a few devs doing these patches in their free time because they are that dedicated -- just as some of the devs have (thanklessly) created events for whatever community is left using their own free time. 

 

That said, it's unfortunate that many new people still find the game through Steam and pay money for a sub assuming this is a live game...1.4 is very likely the final update. Subscription-based games live or die by updates and the lack of even an announcement since June cements the reality that this game is done. 

 

I just wish that NQ would be more open about this so that trusting customers don't waste their time and money on a product that they have decided to shelve. A sizable part of those daily active users are new users booting the game for the first and last time. 

[vylqun]

On 10/11/2023 at 5:11 PM, blundertwink said:

 

Those numbers are per Steam charts by the way, not just random stuff I'm making up. It's likely there's several hundred people left, but rarely more than 50-60 online at the same time....in other words, at any given time, there's not even enough people in this "MMO" to do a round of Fortnite. 

 

thats just the steam client tho, the majority of players use the native client which wont show up on steamcharts. If Steamcharts show 50-60 concurrent players, then the actual amount should be 400-800. Still not a lot, but also not as bad as you make it sound. 

[Wyndle]

44 minutes ago, vylqun said:

If Steamcharts show 50-60 concurrent players, then the actual amount should be 400-800. Still not a lot, but also not as bad as you make it sound. 

Sure, there are significantly more players than steam numbers.  The same is likely true of the OG MMO, EQ, which has 10 to 25 times the numbers of DU on steam.   

 

EQ launched in 1999 and hasn't spent anything on advertising that I'm aware of for more than a decade. I didn't even know it was on Steam until a youtuber dropped a video "playing so you don't have to."  So I ask, how good or bad are DU's Steam numbers?  NQ may be able to maintain the current players count for a couple of decades like EQ, but that isn't growing nor pushing profits. I guess the real question is, what is NQ planning going forward?  I would think EQ is still alive due to active development and new expansions but I could be wrong. 

[blundertwink]

6 hours ago, vylqun said:

 

thats just the steam client tho, the majority of players use the native client which wont show up on steamcharts. If Steamcharts show 50-60 concurrent players, then the actual amount should be 400-800. Still not a lot, but also not as bad as you make it sound. 

 

The problem here is that the numbers on Steam are actual numbers, whereas 400-800 concurrent players is completely arbitrary.

 

For other MMOs, they actually market their native clients, so you might be able to make this claim, but you'll never be able to have an objective window into native stats without internal data. 

 

In other words, you're pulling this idea out of nowhere with no evidence...what makes you think that the numbers are this high? That the native client attracts oh-so-many people when DU hasn't marketed or updated this game in MONTHS...? Where is this claim coming from? Have you ever seen 400-800 people online at once in the last few months? 

 

There are plenty of MMOs on Steam we can use for comparison -- the reality is that DU has very very few players even compared to OLD games like EQ as @Wyndle pointed out.

 

Even NQ has given up on this game and has no plans for a next major update. Does THAT sound like a product that's doing "better than people think"...?   

 

Even the CEO doesn't post about the game anymore...they have been very, very clear that DU is NOT the company's main focus anymore. They've moved on.

 

It's fine if other people don't want to move on; spend your time and money how you want...but let's not delude would-be players into thinking that the population in this game is healthy or that the game has a future.

 

The studio itself doesn't have any updates planned this soon after going live. Development is done. Player counts aren't near enough to make this a viable product, and you don't have to believe random claims from some stranger, just look at the CEO's recent posts and the fact that there is no version 1.5 announced, planned, or even rumored. 

[CptLoRes]

You can argue that steam player count cannot be used as absolute numbers for active DU players. But more importantly the steam charts are showing players trends which should be relevant for all players regardless for if they are on steam or not. And those do not look good, and we don't have to look very hard to see that reality agrees.

 

A steam peak of 788 players and the current peak with only 45 players, is a 94% drop.

And even if there are more non steam players, they are nowhere near the numbers needed to justify the continued development on a game like this. You could double or triple the most positive players count mentioned here, and it would still not be enough to support a future for the game.

[Atmosph3rik]

Considering the game isn't really finished, and there are no major updates planned, the numbers seem higher then i would expect.

 

MMO's are like sharks.  If they stop moving, they start to die.  If this was a standard MMO with nothing really unique to offer, i don't think anyone would be playing at all right now.

 

Saying the numbers don't justify further development doesn't make sense to me, when the current numbers are due to no further development being planned.

 

It seems to me that there are still a lot of people who are interested in the game's potential.  But they're all just watching now, maybe playing a bit here and there, and waiting to see what NQ does next.

 

I don't expect anything at this point.  But if NQ doesn't finish the game or sell it to someone who wants to finish it, then i'll just be waiting for someone else to make a game like this.

 

 

[Wyndle]

16 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

Considering the game isn't really finished, and there are no major updates planned, the numbers seem higher then i would expect.

 

MMO's are like sharks.  If they stop moving, they start to die.  If this was a standard MMO with nothing really unique to offer, i don't think anyone would be playing at all right now.

 

Saying the numbers don't justify further development doesn't make sense to me, when the current numbers are due to no further development being planned.

 

It seems to me that there are still a lot of people who are interested in the game's potential.  But they're all just watching now, maybe playing a bit here and there, and waiting to see what NQ does next.

 

I don't expect anything at this point.  But if NQ doesn't finish the game or sell it to someone who wants to finish it, then i'll just be waiting for someone else to make a game like this.

 

 

Baring some miracle of a secret 1.5 plan, I'd say it's finished.  There have been too many things taken away to be focused on the hope of potential at this point.  Potential mattered pre-release, now we're looking at results in the wake of SC's latest convention and compared to a 20+ year old MMO.  SC probably won't be officially launched before 2030 but they're showing real tortoise level progress.  What has DU brought to the table so far?

[AdmiralS3]

• Quote

  Add some asteroids with mega nodes.  We miss those!  If you are the one who discovers it, you get double the amount of time before the roid gets broadcast.

  
  Ehh honestly at present the ore market is crap all the way around. They would be better of bringing back a limited number of bots to buy t1 ore at a reasonable and variable price, Not at 25, but not at 6... right now the market is just inundated with T1, and its artificially dropping the t2 and t3 prices.
   

  Quote

  Unbalance some of the game.  Give our L-core ships some of their speed back!  Give some overall power back to airfoils and engines for getting off Alioth. No one was complaining loud enough about balance to keep some of the changes made in place.  The changes just made everyone mad.

Honestly it would make sense to do this.

• Quote

  Schematics: You guys were solid until the .23 release when schematics came out.  I know it helps balance the game, but no one cared!  It was an improvement when you dropped schematic requirements off low tier items and introduced schematic containers, but everyone still hates them.  You said getting rid of them would be a tough job.  Ok, then drop the cost to dirt cheap and go back to only one schematic needed on a machine.  Needing repeated schematics in a machine is just dumb.  Who needs more than one set of blueprints to build things?

If you just go back to the previous version of schematics, we would be happy. Having to constantly time sink efforts into making heaps and heaps of schematics is just one more thing we HAVE to do every day.

Quote

Add something for us to aspire to.  DU really is my only game, so I don’t what that would be.  But there really is no purpose to DU.  I build stuff.  Then what?

To be fair with the schematics if they were to go back to the way they were it would give us something to strive for at least. Right now, I can have any one I want. but it constantly costs me more and more to keep them going.

• Quote

  Bring back the bots.  The market is collapsing.  Bots in a limited form will help the small player.  There aren’t enough players in the game for me to sell enough things to keep afloat.

The market has tanked.... honestly as I said above it's the best bet.... you don't need 300 of them... and they don't have to run constantly... but every few days they could put out a few orders here or there. Mostly for T1 ores to stabilize the pricing some and get rid of the overabundance of T1 ores available presently.

• Quote

  Cut the weekly fee on territories by at least half.   Single players should pay no more than 100k.  You’ll have to figure out something else to deal with those to keep territories and don’t use them.  Perhaps set up a sliding scale based on your performance in the game.  But I can’t afford the weekly rate.  I don’t generate enough income.  I would LOVE to set up mining units, but the market is bottoming out bad.  It’s not worth the upkeep.

Maybe 100k for your 1st Territory, 200k for your 2nd, 400k for your 3rd..... scale up to about 2 million give or take.

• Quote

  Mining units… the upkeep is just irritating.  Simplify it and make the need to visit them less.

Honestly while yes, it's another time sink at least this gives you a bonus for doing it. To be fair we should have to do something other than just set them and walk away. The system works, don't mess with this.

• Quote

  Introduce clear voxels.  I have some weird window shapes to fill and the glass panels and canopy shapes just don’t cut it.

Clear voxels would be awesome.

• Quote

  Reconfigure the Large Dynamic cores for a 2nd style.   Don't need more voxels, just need them to be longer.  Make them thinner and longer would make A LOT of people happy.

Gonna go with no for this one. Honestly, I like the ones we have. Don't mess with what already works. Can you imagine the chaos of hundreds if not thousands of players having to "Fix" their constructs to conform to the new setup?

[vylqun]

On 10/23/2023 at 6:04 PM, blundertwink said:

 

The problem here is that the numbers on Steam are actual numbers, whereas 400-800 concurrent players is completely arbitrary.

 

For other MMOs, they actually market their native clients, so you might be able to make this claim, but you'll never be able to have an objective window into native stats without internal data. 

 

In other words, you're pulling this idea out of nowhere with no evidence...what makes you think that the numbers are this high? That the native client attracts oh-so-many people when DU hasn't marketed or updated this game in MONTHS...? Where is this claim coming from? Have you ever seen 400-800 people online at once in the last few months? 

 

yes, its a more or less arbitrary guess, but its based on the ratio of native:steam account players i know about from the group of players i play with (orgs and racing community). The assumption that this can be generalized for the whole DU-community might be wrong, but its unlikely.

[blundertwink]

5 hours ago, vylqun said:

 

yes, its a more or less arbitrary guess, but its based on the ratio of native:steam account players i know about from the group of players i play with (orgs and racing community). The assumption that this can be generalized for the whole DU-community might be wrong, but its unlikely.

 

So...on one hand its an arbitrary guess, on the other its powered by a small sample size of your friends...but somehow that generalization is unlikely to be wrong...?

 

It doesn't really matter in the end...the subs are clearly very small, to the point where NQ is no longer planning for any major update.

 

Regardless of how many players that actually is, every fact we have says that it isn't nearly enough, such that any changes are not worth the effort and completely unrealistic and implausible.

 

It's not me you have to convince, it's NQ, and they've made it clear for many, many months that DU isn't their priority. 

 

Here's some additional evidence from the CEO's linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nouredine-abboud-89b3ab1/recent-activity/all/ 

 

Even in their recent trade shows, their booth has...nothing about DU at all. People that are proud of their products tend to show them off, advertise them, and talk about them at trade shows, haha!

 

DU is very much a done deal, it's just that NQ doesn't want to stop collecting what few subs they have if they don't have to. 

[RugesV]

The problem with going back to the OG DU is it was supposed to be a 2nd life clone.  where players create the content. They did an ok job for building a shell of a game. But never followed through with building the tools needed for players to create content.  They started swapping mindsets and making it more of a game. But never followed through with adding content.