Goodbye DU World!

[Sethioz]

Goodbye Dual Universe. I don't think devs and/or publishers are interested in keeping this game alive anymore. in early access days i was invited to try the game, they gave me 6 months gametime, but after they did a wipe, i stopped playing. about 2 years ago they gave me another 12 months gametime so i can make videos, but they're not really interested anymore. I ran out of gametime about month ago and they only gave me 1 month extension .. after trying to reach them for 3 months!

what am i going to do with 1 month? i can't get anything done .. it causes me only more stress than i already have.

 

so today i released my last video (probably) that i had ready and think i'm done now. 

I put all my stuff on haven, so it should be safe in case they decide to provide me more gametime, but otherwise i have no money to pay for the game, specially with cry-worthy views i get from these videos. as long as i can play for free, i don't mind making videos along the way, but game isn't worth paying for.

 

I really like the concept, but 2 big problems for me are: 1) it's not free to play and 2) extreme lag, i get 5-15fps with L-core ships, even tho none of my hardware is under 100% load, otherwise GPU is under constant 100% load for no reason at all, even if i look at ground that has less going on than in minecraft, it still uses 100% of GPU, why?

DU is honestly the worst optimized game i have ever seen, it lags SO BAD. there's 0 optimization. 

i rather not go into details, but anyone who knows how computers work, knows GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) renders what you see on monitor, it turns digital data into pixel-data, which is how graphics are generated. So when you're looking at BLACK page, there's very minimal amount of GPU usage, because it just has to refresh that black screen and nothing else, it doesn't have to calculate new data. 

This is why in most games when using ultra graphics in 4k, you will start seeing lower FPS in areas that have lot going on, GPU has to do billions of calculations per second to render that image, BUT when you're looking at GROUND, that has just basic texture data, GPU doesn't have to work much at all, but in DU your GPU is under 100% load no matter if you look at ground or not .. this is what i never understood, how can devs not fix this?

in fact, one month i played only DU, about 4-8 hours a day and this made me +25eur electricity bill. that's right, cuz of that constant GPU 100% usage i had to pay 25 eur a month more for electricity!

 

in other words, this game just isn't worth it. i've been dealing with extreme depression for over 10 years and this only causes me more stress.

If NQ decides to provide me at least 12 months game time, i'm willing to check back every now and then and make some videos, but otherwise i'm done with it.

 

it was fun and i liked building stuff and salvaging, but pay2play + extreme lag just isn't worth it. i thought they will work on optimizing the game, but ever since early access, i haven't seen a single update that addresses the extreme lag and player count keeps dropping, i think they just abandon the project when it's no longer worth upkeeping the servers.

 

another thing i never understood, is why do they boast about the "single shard server" if it won't matter? there are many other MMO games that appear to be "one server", but actually they use multiple servers to spread the load. I KNOW WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS, but my point is that from player's point of view, there is NO difference at all.

 

Honestly i'm not even sure if i can bother coming back even if they give me more gametime, this lag is frustrating and causes me more stress and sometimes even headache. I can play all modern games just fine that are optimized. Such as forza horizon 5, resident evil village, expeditions: a mudrunner game, cs2 (graphics update) ..etc and i run them in 4k or 1440p with AMD's upscaler. DU doesn't even have AMD upscaler, it uses the dlss which is not even available on my GPU. on top of that, if you compare DU graphics to any of the mentioned games, then DU looks like minecraft compared to those games, yet it requires like 10x more GPU power .. WHY?

 

anyway, just wanted to post here and say that i'm done with it (probably).

as PC expert and gamer, my opinion on why DU is not popular, are the 2 reasons i mentioned 1) it's pay2play and 2) extremely poor performance with high resource usage

DU could be amazing if devs would fix lag and make it either 1 time payment or free2play + microtransactions. they could sell element skins, i would have actually paid for some. PlanetSide2 is free2play and uses same mechanic, it's still alive after 12 years with over 3000 daily players because of this concept.

 

I hope DU gets new life kicked into it, but i think chance of this happening  is below 1%

 

Here's playlist with all of my DU videos:

 

[sHuRuLuNi]

Your Haven base must be full with stuff by now, is there even any space left

[blundertwink]

@Sethioz Best of luck to you, and I'm very sorry for the idea that DU has caused you more stress. 

 

The devs have the money and resources to fix DU, but they have been recently hiring for other (UE5) game projects, including a "car combat arena" IP.

 

To be harsh, they took the promise, funding, and any shred of revenue gained from DU and decided to work on other games that are less ambitious and more profit-focused. 

 

They seemingly stopped working on DU almost a year ago (after their last update in Summer 2023) and don't have the integrity to just be honest and transparent about this fact. Games fail all the time but at least most studios are honest enough to admit it, especially charging people AAA sub prices as they invest that money in other games. 

[Wyndle]

Not just AAA sub prices, but a price increase at launch.

 

There are a few devs that I have had brief positive interactions with but my overall experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth for NQ. I held more hope for DU than NQ earned and I ignored warning signs I should not have so I accept my part of the blame.  I even got my hopes up when I saw an unread icon in the patch notes section, hoping for even the tiniest bug fix to be tossed in.  

 

If the goal was disenchantment, disillusionment, or demoralizing then congrats.   You win.  

[xTru]

I`ve promised my self so many times that I will no longer invest in crowd founded games....

[Wyndle]

3 hours ago, xTru said:

I`ve promised my self so many times that I will no longer invest in crowd founded games....

At this point crowd funded games appear to be almost exclusively grift.  There needs to be an aggressive middle party that has some authority over the project or there's too much money sitting on the table without anyone watching where it goes.  I am not opposed to the general concept of crowd funding but the current iterations are broken with regard to game development. 

 

IMO, a crowd funded hostile corporate takeover of a studio has a better chance of completing a project and less financial risk to boot.  A hand picked exec team for a newly created studio would be ideal rather than handing money to a black box with a studio name already attached. 

[blundertwink]

On 4/2/2024 at 3:39 PM, Wyndle said:

At this point crowd funded games appear to be almost exclusively grift.  There needs to be an aggressive middle party that has some authority over the project or there's too much money sitting on the table without anyone watching where it goes.

 

100% -- just don't hand money over to any Kickstarter project if you expect something back.

 

Otherwise, it's your call on if you want to effectively donate money to a for-profit enterprise. Kickstarter's customer isn't end users, it's businesses. 

 

The other issue here....end users represented <5% of NQ's total money raised. 

 

So on one hand you have a ton of people representing <5% of the funds, and on the other real investors you have actual obligations to. 

 

Crowd funding doesn't really work for MMOs. 

 

DU was one of (maybe the top?) KS game in the year it launched, and you can't build a competitive MMO for 500k pounds! 

 

The most successful KS projects ever haven't crossed $50 million in funding, while the typical MMO pipeline raises around 4 times that amount through traditional channels. Even DU raised >$20 million, and this from a guy with zero experience in game dev at all. 

 

So, yeah, CrowdFunding kind of sucks. Go figure, and entire model based on the "honor system" doesn't work well with capitalism.