An Advertisement for Dual Universe (updated)

[Gearss]

 

Here is a long overdue advertisement for Dual Universe:

Have you ever dreamed of exploring the vastness of space, building your own ships and stations, trading with other players, or waging war in a fully editable sandbox universe? If so, then Dual Universe is the game for you!

Dual Universe is a first-person Sci-Fi MMO built and driven by players, in a single persistent universe. You can build almost anything out of voxels, from simple hovercrafts to massive orbital stations, using one of the most advanced voxel technology ever created. You can also script your creations with Lua, adding interactivity and functionality to your designs.

But Dual Universe is not just about building. It’s also about living in a dynamic and emergent world, where you can explore new planets, mine resources, craft items, trade in a free economy, join or create organizations, and participate in territorial control and combat. You can also interact with other players in various ways, such as chatting, messaging, trading, or fighting.

Dual Universe is a game where you have the freedom to create your own destiny and shape the universe as you see fit. You can follow your own goals and passions, or join forces with others to achieve common objectives. You can be a peaceful explorer, a ruthless pirate, a savvy merchant, a visionary architect, a fearless leader, or anything in between.

Dual Universe is a game where you can experience the thrill of discovery, the challenge of survival, the joy of creation, and the excitement of adventure. It’s a game where you can leave your mark on history and become part of a living legend.

If you are looking for a game that offers endless possibilities and unlimited fun, then look no further than Dual Universe. You can buy it on Steam for $14.99 and get one month of game time. You can also subscribe for longer periods and enjoy additional benefits.

Don’t miss this opportunity to join one of the most ambitious and innovative MMO projects ever made. Dual Universe needs you!

Visit the official website or the Steam for more information.

See you in the stars! 🚀

Dual Universe is a very interesting game. It is a first-person Sci-Fi MMO built and driven by players, in a single persistent universe. You can build almost anything out of voxels, trade in a free economy, lead industries, travel through space, explore planets, or wage war in a fully editable sandbox universe¹. It is reported to combine elements of Eve Online and Star Citizen, as well as Minecraft, No Man's Sky, and Space Engineers³.

megadonkeyx·

why buy expensive ships for star citizen when the game is fundamentally broken and likely always will be? come play a game where you make your own ship, base and whatever else you want.

it already has server meshing and whats more it all works!

pluggo pluggo.

Darth_ShelL·

even if you don't like to build you can by ship or somewhat from other players for ingame money, not dollars

Traditional-Ad59·

'Were not in Kansas anymore!'

Dual Universe is a game like no other, on the frontier of next generation entertainment, its a creator's playground of almost limitless possibilities set in a single Solar System. (yes its space themed)

But be warned, there is a steep learning curve backed up by an amazing community hell bent on sharing their learnings and occasionally resources to help you along the way.

The game itself is built up of several genres that can overlap to allow players to progress in the game :-

Crafting - From refining ores to making widgets to make even bigger widgets, DU has an expansive crafting system that you can sell at market or use to create your own buildings / ships etc.

Building - An impressive array of voxel editing tools exists in the game, allowing you to produce any shape of building / vehicle / whatever that you can think up. Several types of core exist in the game, these cores form the build areas for your voxels and prefab elements (like ship engines)(. Cores can be Static (for planet based buildings, Dynamic (for any vehicle your imagination can think up) or Space Cores (To build the space station of your dreams). Cores of the same type can be linked together to make even bigger build areas.

Mining - Travel to distant planets or asteroids to scan for differing qualities of ores. Deploy your mining units to draw those precious ores out and sell them at market, trade directly with customers or use the ore yourself to make cool things.

Logistics - Make your fortune as a space trucker, moving mud from distant planets to markets for eager customers, but be warned, danger lurks outside of the safezones.

PvP - Take your creations out of the safe zone and take your chances. Protect an ore convoy from pirates or become a pirate yourself!

Come and make your Quanta the way you choose.

BootyBanzai·

Dual Universe is the next step after Minecraft!

Darth_ShelL·

Yeah! And lua much better than redstone

BootyBanzai·

It is Adult Sci Fi minecraft on steroids! Follow AK_Swervin on YouTube and watch his weekly recap videos of his adventures and you will get a good feel for the game! If you can dream it, you can build it! It does have a huge learning curve but has the most friendliest and helpful player community out of any game. If you like building games then you should check this one out for sure! Claim your land and let your creativity loose! It's a great feeling when you build your first starship from scratch and make it into space!

No_Sport_1920·

The community is truly what makes this game shine.

Don't be a solo player.

Join a community or series odd communities. Make friends, business partners, or enemies.

Don't be a solo player.

Go to the weekend races at one of the numerous race tracks, or go to the Dome(s) for a chance to win big, go shopping at a player run store (or run your own hub of commerce), go mining asteroids or search for wrecks in deep space, ferry goods between planets and markets, run a small smelting operation or giga factory... but...

Don't be a solo player.

You will get out of this game what you put in. Ask people for advice (doesn't even need to be in the help channel) because we love to help people. Ask the streamers how to do things, they will almost always explain it or show you.

Don't be a solo player.

Blue_Smoke369

If anyone wants to check the game out its free to play in a test server. TBH though, the test server doesn't have much of a population so its not a genuine experience. You can buy the game for $15 and get the first month free on steam. If your wondering where to get started, just jump into General Chat and ask for orgs that are recruiting or for help in the game. The people in general chat are very helpful and will often send you money to help you get started. The community of the game is great and is made up mostly of older players with significant time to play. You can defiantly play this game on nights and weekends, but it does require some time (2+ hours) to do Roid mining which is the best way to earn money right now. My name is Gearss (Recruiter code: 130117) in the game and I will be happy to help anyone that wants to get started, and i know others that will do the same. I also run the DU Market Intel Discord which reports Ore prices & Trends as well as Mining Reports so you know what to go mining for to make the most money. The DU Market Intel discord is here: https://discord.gg/puvg4zUcM The Official Discord for DU is: https://discord.gg/puvg4zUcM The Novean Free Market is: https://discord.gg/Mcfbxm8kqn and the DU Auction House is: https://discord.gg/54YurCYZkd These discords are the main ones I use along with the Galaxy Truckers discord which is an Org I am apart of. If you want to Join Galaxy Truckers send an application in game and I will accept it. Once accepted you can find the discord on the News page. Hope to see some of you in the game. All the Best!

When you first enter the game you will land on Haven. If you want you can scrap your lander and use the parts for your first ship. Among the first things to do is to get Large Miners setup on your land so you can begin mining ore. You can sell this ore for money for buying other things at the market or use it in your own factory to make your own parts. It is possible to be completely self sufficient without using the market, but i wouldn't recommend it.

The main market in the game is Market 6 and its located on Alioth. To get they're you'll need a ship that can fly in space or you can teleport there from the Haven Markets 1-10. The Haven markets are sparsely stocked but there is activity due to influx of around 50 new people to Haven each week. It used to be possible to go to Alioth and mine T1 profitably but currently the prices are a little low to make it worth while so you'll want to stay on Haven until you go Roid mining and make a few million. With roid mining you can make around 5-6m/hr with top skills and talents. Starting off you can expect a lot less but even a few million will help you enormously. There are also Missions you can do running goods from point to point in a sizeable ship that can earn around 1m/hr.

I sell a well rounded and inexpensive ship that get you off to a great start. Heres the ad for it:

The Luna Proto Hybrid: Roid Miner, 2 L container hauler (2.5 kt in atmo), extremely fast warp ship, 7.81g in space. Everything you need in one ship and cheap: BP: 250k CTB: 2.6m Total cost: 2.85m https://du-creators.org/makers/Gearss/ship/Luna%20Proto%20Hybrid VR: LPHybrid

I also sell one of the most popular Pocket Ships: https://du-creators.org/makers/Gearss/ship/pocketJet-Rare

Other ships and constructs can be found at: https://du-creators.org/ where almost all the blueprints for sale in the game are posted.

With the right ships and some time mining you'll have plenty of money to start your empire.

The Luna Proto Hybrid is now Free Forever for whoever wants one. Thanks to a substantial donation from another player I am now able to offer the ship for free including all parts needed to construct it. Check out the game now and start your adventure.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Gearss

[sHuRuLuNi]

All I see is a whole lot of nothing, and a tiny rocket icon in the middle of nothing.

[blundertwink]

This idea that DU would do fine if "only it had adverts" is strange. 

 

First, they did run adverts and they failed to either convert or retain enough people.

 

Second, Steam guarantees every new game about 1 million unique impressions to give it a real shot and to understand how to rank the game in the store. They failed with that, too, now ranking far below many old single player games. 

 

Also...."player made" adverts make no sense unless you're an influencer willing to parley hard-won views into a company's adverts for the sake of a game that even the developer has decided not to pursue...? 

 

Finally...it's useless trying to exaggerate some of DU's features (as you have IMO...even the idea that the game has "exploration" is a laugh to me) because getting people in the door is not the real battle for a subscription MMO, it's retention. It'd be very easy to spend more you make when the sub is fairly cheap and the CPA in the gaming space is fairly high.

[Wyndle]

21 hours ago, blundertwink said:

This idea that DU would do fine if "only it had adverts" is strange. 

The whole time I was having flashbacks of fan "save our show" campaigns that generally flop.  The only thing that brought back old shows were reboots, and it is even more rare for those to be hits than first run shows.

I won't say it can't work but I wouldn't wager a single molecule on it having an impact.

[AdmiralS3]

On 11/22/2023 at 10:43 AM, blundertwink said:

Second, Steam guarantees every new game about 1 million unique impressions to give it a real shot and to understand how to rank the game in the store. They failed with that, too, now ranking far below many old single player games. 

 

To be fair and frank... the steam efforts were waylaid by a crap ton of former players that were disenfranchised by the game. The posts over at steam range from caustic at best to downright manically spiteful. Anyone with anything reasonably positive to say about the game in anyway there is shouted down instantly by 30 people even now. Some calling the game a money grab, some calling it a scam.

Let's face it NQ has made its fair share of mistakes, but every change has been met with outright total cynicism from some corners. The original schematics were a fine and fair change... but hundreds of players went berserk over it. Removing the mega-nodes from planets... an excellent change, the game is less laggy now (usually) and oh I don't suddenly land in a hole every time I set my ship down to visit a friend... yet once again another 100 or so players had an uproar and quit. They removed the bots (yes, I think a silly idea given the limited number of players.) on what's supposed to be a player driven market... another 100 or so players walked away with the usual vehemence and spite. (Let's not even get into the great wipe of 2022.)

Were all of those changes great? Were they all implemented well? No not all of them were great and NQ has a habit of poor implementation and trial and error.... however, in the end the changes worked out eventually.

I do find it amusing when one of those I hate DU players returns to the game suddenly though.

[Owl_Superb]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:09 AM, AdmiralS3 said:

in the end the changes worked out eventually.

And the dozens of players lived happily ever after, until the server shut down, the end.

[blundertwink]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:09 AM, AdmiralS3 said:

To be fair and frank... the steam efforts were waylaid by a crap ton of former players that were disenfranchised by the game. The posts over at steam range from caustic at best to downright manically spiteful. Anyone with anything reasonably positive to say about the game in anyway there is shouted down instantly by 30 people even now. Some calling the game a money grab, some calling it a scam.

 

There's a few things I find strange about this idea. 

 

First, the idea that posts on a Steam forum have any meaningful impact on sales...is not backed by evidence. Per a 2019 study, the main decision-driver for games...? Price. About 2/5th use Youtube to make a choice, with about 30% trusting mainstream reviews and 30% trusting user reviews. 

 

I'm not saying it has no impact, but in the grand scheme of the community of over 100 million Steam purchasers? Very unlikely that even 10% are reading those forums before buying IMO...

 

Second, the idea that everyone that's complaining is making an effort to "waylay" the game. How do you know? Who decides which feedbacks are from "disenfranchised players" and what is genuine?

 

I don't agree with being caustic or mean and accept that there's definitely people that do like the game for legit reasons...there's no reason to scream at people with a different view, but you're inferring some malevolent intent or conspiracy that doesn't exist. 

 

Third, if all this negative feedback is merely "disgruntled" players...how do you explain the poor mainstream reviews, lack of impact on social channels like Twitch and YouTube, and the poor Steam reviews, overall?

 

If all that feedback is really from ex-players, it means that the game hasn't attracted any new players to drown out a few beta players. It also doesn't make much sense in general, because most players from beta did not re-purchase the game on Steam and used the native client, instead. The vast majority of Steam users are fresh, new users. 

 

Fourth, the game has never peaked at more than 800 concurrent users...if the game were quality, it would have made more of a splash at launch among unaffiliated mainstream review outlets, streamers, and YouTubers, driving more users, therefore driving more "genuine" reviews. 
 

Which is more likely...some conspiracy by disgruntled ex-players to leverage a niche part of Steam no one cares about to somehow derail sales...or that the game is actually just not popular?  

 

What you're describing about players not liking changes is called a lack of popularity, which is not a conspiracy and is not itself toxic or unfair (although some people are toxic and unfair about it, granted). 

[Wolfram]

Honestly, we don't need adverts for DU, at least not in the current stage. What is really needed is a way to retain players aka reasons for one to keep a sub and stay active. Without that, they can spend as much money as they have advertising the game and it will result in people leaving after the first months.

 

We need content, and by that I mean actual content. Having an ongoing lore event like we had for the PvE is cool and gives everyone an objective, adding new stuff to the game (even if that's just QoL) also helps a lot and gives a feeling that the game is being taken care of, even if there isn't a solid roadmap.

 

Taking care of the public image of the game is also another thing that helps, if the company actually listens and implements changes that are popular and well-received, there's a good chance players will recommend the game to others and the player base will grow organically, not to say that it also helps on retention. This is also important if they decide to advertise, since one might click the ad, but give up after reading too much negative stuff online.

 

Advertising works well for single purchase games, but for subscription stuff like DU, retention is king.

[Hecticus]

A successful DU advert would have to contain certain key phrases, such as: 

 

Now Free to Play

New Cash Shop

Under New Management

[Wyndle]

On 12/1/2023 at 11:40 AM, Hecticus said:

Under New Management

I'm interested.  On an ever slightly related note, what would you imagine a player run buyout to cost?  Since NQ isn't developing it they may be keeping it alive to sell, right?

[blundertwink]

3 hours ago, Wyndle said:

I'm interested.  On an ever slightly related note, what would you imagine a player run buyout to cost?  Since NQ isn't developing it they may be keeping it alive to sell, right?

 

The thing is....NQ is effectively owned by Andurance, the VC that installed one of their people as CEO temporarily post-JC and invested almost half the total $20 million raised for the game. 

 

With other projects in the works, some of them no doubt based on DU's tech...I don't think they would want to sell it in that context.  

 

The cost would probably be in the order of millions of dollars because Andurance invested over $10 million in NQ. Right now, they see product dev as a way to recoup that money -- selling would basically yield nothing, so it's better to just accept the loss of that old investment and swing big with whatever runway NQ has left. 

 

I think if they could have sold it for anything near that amount to recoup this investment they would have a long, long time ago. I don't think it's worth even $1 million in its current state. 

 

What does "sell to the players" actually translate to practically...? Who governs the data and credit card transactions? Who owns the AWS servers and is liable for paying that bill? Who is liable if vendor or players decide to start a lawsuit? 

 

AFAIK there's never been a true crowd-funded MMO (DU raised like <5% with KS), never mind a player-run/player-owned one. I'd love to learn more about a player buyout of a game if it's ever happened before though, because I can only imagine the sort of chaos involved. 

 

Finally...what about NQ's other three projects...? There's a very good chance they will utilize some of the same AWS backends. We know for a fact that they are using Unreal as the engine this time, but we know very little else about these products except for Andurance/NQ's obsession with web3 BS.

 

It's very, very likely they will utilize the same voxel-to-mesh algorithms and backends as DU. 

 

Other posts from them make me think their non-gaming project/projects are centered around web3 / UGC tooling and content dev -- again likely leveraging the voxel-to-mesh backends. 

 

VC's aren't known for being creative, so I think they will hold DU's tech (because no one would pay what they need for this crap) and swing big with the other projects...I doubt the VC gives much of a crap about the community, and by the way.....they do own every single creation that people are making right now. 

 

I think its unlikely, but for all we know, NQ will start selling every single thing people make in DU as assets, or provide them to game studios for a fee. There's really no way to know what their plans are absent NQ actually telling us, which they didn't do even when things were going "well". 🤷‍♂️

[Wyndle]

On 12/4/2023 at 9:58 AM, blundertwink said:

What does "sell to the players" actually translate to practically...? Who governs the data and credit card transactions? Who owns the AWS servers and is liable for paying that bill? Who is liable if vendor or players decide to start a lawsuit? 

 

It would need a central creative figure and a board trusted by at least 1/3rd of the player base to even be worth considering.  Getting a few of the streamers involved couldn't hurt.  Anything other than an organized effort is outright a waste.

 

On 12/4/2023 at 9:58 AM, blundertwink said:

VC's aren't known for being creative, so I think they will hold DU's tech (because no one would pay what they need for this crap) and swing big with the other projects...I doubt the VC gives much of a crap about the community, and by the way.....they do own every single creation that people are making right now. 

 

The VC would only be aware of the community if there were a massive snail mail campaign by the majority of the community.  And your last sentence above is one of the big reasons why I opted to stop playing before my subs expired.  I am relatively certain that the people who actually care about DU have zero influence over the VC.  A genuine buyout campaign would be newsworthy.  I made the suggestion lightly because it couldn't hurt to discuss it but I don't think anything will come of it.