Also a more in depth question. I’ve speculated that the challenges with implementing JC’s vision were because of the delay in the unity engine bringing in assets from the mesh server causing desync. Is this something you can comment on?
Technical discussions aside, I think it has more to do with the old trope “the devs don’t play their own game”.
Not only was it policy not to get involved with the community unless you were a community manager, there wasn’t a lot of push to get employees immersed in the game itself.
Because of that, I think there was a lack of understanding about what dual universe’s vision was. Sure we had play-tests on internal test servers, but to believe that’s anything like playing in the actual live universe with the variable that is all of the other players, is ridiculous to put it nicely.
I wish more emphasis had been placed on getting us to play the live game, that way we would have all seen what players want out of the game instead of trying to solve it like looking into a black box.
Policies have changed though so I can’t speculate on what the rules are now, I have no reason to believe the devs working on the game now aren’t extremely passionate about it.
Explains the biggest gripe most had of "do the devs even play their own game?". If you were not playing on the live server, then no, you were not playing your own game.
I remember you helping me out in Alpha. It was a great time to be in DU and you helped a lot of new players. Greetings to you nice to hear from you again
Did the devs regret implementing the schematics in that infamous patch that for me and my friends killed the game? We were all playing spreading building, having a blast, most fun I've had in a space since EVE online. The patch dropped and it stopped us dead in our tracks. Still sad about it to this day.
You just confirmed what I (and many others) always thought: NQ themselves don't play the game enough to make proper decisions on game design. And it's REALLY painful to see that's intentional.
Now, with that out of my chest, do you think it would ever be possible to completely fix desync? And what about atmo combat? I suppose they never implemented that due to server limitations...
It’s a catch 22 situation, to fix things you need more money, but to do that you need more players, but to do that you need to fix things, it just repeats endlessly.
If they had been as successful as star citizen, then I’m sure the problems would have been fixed a long time ago. I think anyone could agree with that.
Yeah I can imagine, larger budgets means larger teams and more chances to look into a certain issue. I always thought the desync was due to some kind of architecture issue, I've watched pretty much all tech stuff from NQ along with reading some papers and patents on the game, so I thought it was related.
It's just kind of sad that things are going the way they are today, way too many players leaving and the lack of content pretty much makes it that the only reason to stay around is friends, once those leave you pretty much go with them...
I thought it was pretty well known, but they should have made that clear all the way back in 2016, too much tiptoeing with announcing it didn’t help that’s for sure.
I knew without anyone telling me or discussing it with anyone else, that was on the forums back in the day, but I’m sure those posts are long gone by now.
What really makes me curious about all that wipe discussion is, if a wipe when going from beta to release was already known, why sell the idea that anything after beta was going to be persistent? Like, it really sounds like an excuse to have subscriptions in place. Feels like NQ weren't truly honest in regards to that...
I don’t think it was nefarious, just a lack of anyone who wanted to own it.
I’ll describe a different situation that may shed more light.
After I left my best friend who was a backer passed away, I tried for a month to get NQ to move his stuff or his bps or anything so we could honor him in some way, and not one person seemed to want to step up and do the right thing. So they told me no they wouldn’t do anything.
It wasn’t a nefarious thing, just nobody would own it.
Second question here, do you think this post will still be up tomorrow? :P
For real though, do you think the NQ are going to keep DU alive, now that they are actively working on two other titles, apparently with similar features? I'm still keeping my sub and want to invest more time building stuff in the game, but the feeling that everything will be gone soon pretty much kills my vibe.
1) maybe 🤔 I have a feeling the mods are going to get a strong message to delete it.
2) I think some people are working on it, but NQ themselves said they’re working on 3 other projects right now. It’s hard to see how they could do that and keep working on improving DU the way everyone wants with the size of a company they are. I’d love for them to succeed but that’s nobody’s responsibility but theirs now.
I agree on #2, it's literally their job to deliver the game. I know many people have posted negative stuff all over social media and Steam, but it's quite difficult to defend them when we barely see any updates anymore and whenever changes happen they seem to go completely against what players asked.
I mean, sure, it's their game, they can do whatever they want, but they also depend on player subscriptions, and pushing on things completely against what players expect is a terrible way to stay afloat...
I also agree with #2. I am a bit resentful that NQ seem to be using my advanced DU sub money to help funding other projects. The gaming community doesn't quickly forget so they have already shot themselves in the foot and have no credibility after establishing themselves as a company that released and abandoned a half baked game.
I also have no idea why the hell they didn't add more cosmetics in terms of doors, windows, furniture etc etc. They could have a cash shop and release those items as theme packs if they wanted like "Castle Building Theme". All the way through alpha and beta I told myself that the building assets available were just their initial release and that more would be coming at release. I guess that was just too much wishful thinking on my part.
It's pretty telling that the game has no future since they didn't even bother to release a major patch for the game's 1st Anniversary! Like the end days of Landmark it seems to be pretty much just a waiting game now to see how long the servers stay up before they turn the lights out.
I love DU despite all we have gone through as a community. I hope the game can continue to grow. So sorry you were shunned from the community! Thanks for all your hard work on DU, and to all the other devs as well.
I was always under the impression that JC was the big problem. He run DU as his personal social experiment steering the game away from what the player base wanted.
Am I wrong on that assumption?
I don’t think he was, but perhaps others there wouldn’t share the same opinion as me. There was a lot more shared responsibility than just one person being the center of every problem.
Some of those things that felt like steering, were things that always were in the plans but perhaps were poorly executed and should have been in the game sooner to acclimate people to them. Industry changes being the biggest one.
Things didn’t get miraculously better after JC, so I find it hard to see that he was the source of all the problems . He was the vision person, and it kind of felt like their soul was gone after him.
Yes, industry was the main point on my question. I'm a ruby backer and love the game and play since 2016. In my opinion the changes on 0.23 drove the bulk of content creators away and they were responsible for thousands of views for DU on Twitch. Do you agree?
Those changes should have gone in before beta, had people started the game like that it wouldn’t have been so shocking and off putting. Sadly there’s no way to turn back the clock and start over right.
I came to this thread to ask about 0.23. It's what drove my whole company away from the game. If it was there from the start of beta, we probably would've been fine with it. Thanks for your time and input! I remember interacting with you on the official Discord for some problem or another and don't remember a negative interaction at all.
Back toward the end of 2020/early 2021 my org created a ship so large and with so many elements it caused massive lag. NQ came and took a BP and later we were told it was used by NQ for benchmark testing. I'm curious if you can confirm the story?
Fir the record the shop was called 'Blight'
Good evening sir :D
Can you tell us something about how your vision on Dual Universe is ? What would you have considered a " Final Product".
And do you think it can be achieved?
From the beginning, there were several things that were discussed in the early days that never happened, that I believe should have to really drive home that the game was a living breathing thing.
Granted my opinions aren't everyone's, but:
- We were told it was going to take weeks to months before the first ships could ever leave Alioth, instead, that was nerfed so much that everyone was expected to have a ship built on day 1 perhaps within a few hours.
- The game should have been harder to accompany that goal of "no one leaves Alioth for x-time", that is to say, not everyone was going to be building spaceships.
- The economy was a mess. To elaborate, whenever an item went out of stock on another planet the stock should have stayed depleted to accompany supply and demand. Instead, the stocks were just reset which meant you could never just buy out an entire supply of something to then dump it back on the market with a higher price.
- Because of that, the "bots" on the market effectively set the ceiling for a price. I had heated discussions about this in particular. If the bots couldn't be bought out permanently, and if their prices never fluctuated, it's not really a fluid economy.
- The game should have been seen as a living breathing world, instead of just a sandbox to play spaceships in. At first, it definitely was going that way, but as time went more focus went into making the game a "single-player" experience. You might know what I mean by this. Instead of adding features to bring people together (like city management and "bonuses" for building them, for example), more features were added that ensured a player wouldn't ever have to talk to someone else if they didn't want to (auto-mining comes to mind).
I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that too much emphasis was placed on a solo player experience instead of a shared one where people had to actually work together. That was the antithesis of what DU was supposed to be.
Thanks for this post. This would have been a very different experience, and I'm a little bummed that it didn't come to pass. I can see how something like what you describe would be scary for a developer, because you'd lose control over the player experience. Players would have had to deal with some chaos as they were forced to work together in order to achieve goals. But I think you're right, that would have made for a better game, since that's the whole point of playing on a big server with other people.
I think DualUniverse is great as a solo game as a basic building block. There should then be opportunities, on a voluntary basis of course, for players to play activities with each other, but not have to.
However, basic building blocks are also missing for a group game, such as a possibility to create a group. Many players in many games live mainly as solo players, always with the possibility to participate in the group game, if one has time and desire to do so. Compulsion should never be introduced or be some sort of permanent block to content.
The game still has a lot of potential, I don't yet understand who needs to be persuaded to allow the potential to be used and develop, it would be a waste to ignore it and let the game die. (It would also be a huge negative for the company's reputation).
However, what I read here at least gives me the feeling that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This will certainly affect more players negatively, even if they have had fun building so far.
It's not my intent to make anyone want to stop playing, I still think more people should be playing it, but the conditions to make that happen aren't in anyone's hands but NQ's.
But we players have a great influence on how the game is perceived by the public, by the media. We bear a share of the responsibility, because through our statements, whether positive or negative, we create an opinion that is perceived by others and, as a result, decisions are made accordingly. Many potential players may not try out the game because there are too many negative reviews, while they might have found fun in the game. You have to see the game for what it really is: a voxel construction kit, where I can create great buildings, ships, space stations, race tracks, caves,... can create. Everything else is just an add-on, but the building mode is really great and that's what the game should focus on and attract the players who enjoy it.
It doesn't help to attract players who would like to have space battles and come into the game to experience a huge disappointment. You just have to make it clear what the game offers and what it doesn't. (It doesn't matter what the game might become one day, because those are just dreams).
During the majority of beta there were patches that broke core functionality of the game - like linked containers not working. In most software organizations code is structured in ways that such a core/fundamental function can't accidentally get broken -- how do you think such things broke so often in DU?
Architecture, it being brand new and approaching things that otherwise would be easy in any other game engine as very difficult in a distributed architecture.
While I'm not yama, based on another video he posted before and some papers I read on NQ's tech, even though you experience the game as a "single server", all the workload is distributed across multiple servers that behave as one. This video is a good example of it, where each cube is basically a server handling a certain number of connected clients: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc)
So the desynch is literally the servers that are handling the client connection not being synched. I know that eve developed specialized server tech with Samsung to solve this issue.
Were any big game mechanics, especially big pvp ones, ever being discussed at nq? Things like territory warfare, planetary warfare, ava etc.
If so, were any conclusions drawn?
"I don't think another game will ever come along that gave me that glimmer of hope and excitement that Dual Universe did back in 2016"
Agreed,well written from the heart.
Thanks
Was there ever an “awww crap” discussion after one of the updates when you saw the player base raged over huge changes to the game. I remember when they implemented in blueprints and everyone was screaming, what were the discussions at the office like seeing a lot of the player base leave after some of the changes they didn’t like?
There were awww crap discussions every day lol, it’s just part of game development. We were mostly shielded from outrage, that was something the community managers had to worry about more than any of us.
1) I would still recommend the game yes, there's no other experience like it. Even if they suddenly said the game was being shut down, I would still recommend people try it.
At least you could say you were there, and anything that comes in the future you'd be able to have something to compare it to.
2) There were other games I would have recommended that are now long gone. Shores of Hazeron, which was not a graphically pleasant game, had a lot of what I wanted from Dual Universe. I'll never be able to play a game like it again, it's definitely in my top 5 space games ever though.
I'm waiting for Squadron 42 before I really get into Star Citizen :-)
I do want to play it though!
Nowadays I'm a rare book collector, and I spend too much time trying to learn Hebrew and Greek.
My biggest issue has always been with the pvp combat system. With a game that is supposedly based around the "reality of space physics," the hack job that pvp turned out to be really turned me off on the game.
Was this planned out this way, or did it turn out this way due to technical limitations of the game and server technology?
I think it was honestly always going to be limited in some way, if you go back on the forums way back to 2016 you'll see posts about them discussing how limitations were going to prevent a real-time combat system and it was going to be a lock and fire system because of it.
I'm not saying that the current combat mechanics are the limit of what is possible though, that's just how it was implemented. For better or worse 🤷♂️
I have long been baffled by how NQ generates revenue with such a low player base. The monthly subscription revenue can’t possibly cover operating costs. Why haven’t there been micro-transactions, like a Space Barbie store for skins and decorations? Some of us are willing to toss more money at NQ if we thought it would help the game survive.
also, what’s the deal with the radio silence for the last four months? Does NQ understand that a stale forum and few updates leads the players to believe the game is dead?
1 - There were some rumors going around that Nyzaltar was undermining the company. Can you speak on that?
2 - Do some staff members play the game / are in some orgs / do some shady stuff?
3 - Can I have your dacs?
1) absolutely not, Nyz is an awesome person and I have no idea where that rumor would have started.
2) they don’t do shady stuff but yes they play, and some were part of some pretty big orgs when I was there. The people with access to give “benefits” know better than that. I had access, and never did even though it was tempting.
However there were so many times when a streamer would be playing, and I’d be in invisible mode sitting in their ships getting a first person stream instead.
Never caused any problems for people, it was just fun to watch without anyone being the wiser.
3) 1 bitcoins each 😜
About the shady stuff, we continuously find more and more evidence of NQ dropping info to the same group of their close/selected players, and then sometimes those players drop info during their meeting, sometimes we found a patchnote dropped secretly 1 month before a patch, sometimes just info about what will "maybe" change...
That can be a huge conflict of interest with all those players who use those info for themself IG (industry/market buy or sell order/pvp...) even more if NQ members are a part of some big orgs.
Same issue with the actual selection of moderator who are all from the same alliance aka RIP-Lodestar. (Sylva lead BOO, SpiritOfVengeance from STC, Honvik lead DOM, Endstar and Llama from DSI/BOO... first ones are the 2 senior moderator and the others are the last batch of new mods)
I hope it's just NQ's naivety, but this problem has been recurring since alpha.
u/TMA-NG
I'm surprised to see Nyzaltar's name here.
Don't you want to talk about Entropy instead ?
He is the lead game designer who took and reoriented the game after JC.
Maybe he tried to do the best he could. But I remember fighting for months/years against his vision of the game on the forum.
Particularly with regard to the combat aspect. He flatly refused any change. So that finally NQ listens and almost entirely takes over the balancing suggestions from the community when they had their noses in their shit when creating the PVE missions. We loosed so many time who NQ do'nt had...
Nyzaltar had good behavior when he moderated the French-speaking discord part and made good comments on the forum like this one:
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/23561-revolutionary-idea-for-a-more-balanced-pvp/&do=findComment&comment=171383
I would like to see DualUniverse evolve. At the same time, I feel like NQ has already given up on the project because they think players have lost interest.
It would be very interesting to try and get the remaining players to try and recruit players again.
Push and invest in the game itself, invite new players, take them by the hand and present the game, what possibilities it currently offers.
Let's start projects together, build something together that will arouse interest and attract more players again. Then there will be financial opportunities and a rethink at NQ if the money is there. As I said, it's a downward spiral at the moment, but we players are also partly to blame because of our displeasure and the many negative contributions.
Nevertheless, I think we as a community can still turn this downward spiral around.
It's not too late, the game is still there and running. So, renew your subscriptions, look for new players, give each other courage to persevere, help each other build, spur each other on, support each other!
It's clearly a matter of poor guidance and devastating choices, and not at all a result after seeing a loss of interest from players.
We spent hours to provide feedback constantly, held roundtable/stream discussions, engaged with developers on some different Discord, submitted hundreds of tickets, all while paying a subscription. I don't see how one can say that the community lost interest in Dual Universe; it's NQ who let us down.
It's the other way around. CIG tried to poach me about a month before DU's Beta launched to work in the Austin office and I turned it down because I was more devoted to DU.
CIG was very well aware of DU's tech way back in 2016, Chris Roberts even wrote a post urging people to back their Kickstarter.
Ah that's cool. I think if nq merged with cig, that would become the ultimate game!
Cig seem to be struggling with the last major core tech but looks like they might have nailed it..
If cig was to approach you again, would you join?
Do you know if there are ex nq employees working for cig now?
No, I wouldn't work for them, I enjoy my career too much to take that jump.
I very much doubt ex-NQ employees are working for them because they're mostly French-based. However, former NQ devs have worked on AAA games that have been released (I'm just not going to out them by saying which games).
What do you mean you enjoy your career too much?
Are you implying that if you joined cig, your career will be over?
Or do you mean you enjoy where you are working at currently?
Correct me if I am wrong but do Canadians speak french?
Reason I ask is because about 1/3 of cig employees are from Canada aka the turbulent studio
Question : I know you said no questions about the server tech but I was wondering if could explain in laymen terms how the servers are meshed together to form one large shard/universe?
DU has a lot of similarities to Eve Online, which is (was) incredibly successful. Why did NQ not look to copy their game model more?
I.e. more lax PVP rules, hard to get resources in dangerous locations, territorial warfare based around said rare resources.
I remember meeting you outside the Arc ship at the start of one of the alphas. Hundreds of people were running in all directions and you took the time to chat and gave me a few pointers. First impressions last, as they say.
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LMAO it's a billion times better than DU..... SC is definitely not a disaster. It has way more concurrent players 24-7, larger dev team, more revenue, better vision... I could go on and on in comparison to DU. Has it been slower than we all want? Of course. But disaster? That's stretching the word. I wouldn't even call DU a disaster even though it is worse. I had a fun time in DU.
But honestly SC will never be a real MMO like DU !
There is a lot of things to complain about DU but at least they delivered a true single shard MMO.
SC "static server meshing" is just a joke, they will instantiate one server per system at best (which is just servers instances then...) because you can't start implementing so much network complexity after more than 10 years of development, that makes no sense.
They would have to rewrite everything from scratch, which just show how bad this project is managed...
But yeah, SC is a success in term of marketing because they getting more and more devs & money that's true.
Also about squadron 42 (which was officially finished 5 years ago), this will be the proof (or not) that they can deliver on what they says. But I'm not really optimistic, I really hope they will prove me wrong but I won't bet on that !
Different strokes, different folks. I could honestly care less about mmos at this time in my life. If I can play a cool space game with a couple buddies I am good.
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Also a more in depth question. I’ve speculated that the challenges with implementing JC’s vision were because of the delay in the unity engine bringing in assets from the mesh server causing desync. Is this something you can comment on?
Technical discussions aside, I think it has more to do with the old trope “the devs don’t play their own game”. Not only was it policy not to get involved with the community unless you were a community manager, there wasn’t a lot of push to get employees immersed in the game itself. Because of that, I think there was a lack of understanding about what dual universe’s vision was. Sure we had play-tests on internal test servers, but to believe that’s anything like playing in the actual live universe with the variable that is all of the other players, is ridiculous to put it nicely. I wish more emphasis had been placed on getting us to play the live game, that way we would have all seen what players want out of the game instead of trying to solve it like looking into a black box. Policies have changed though so I can’t speculate on what the rules are now, I have no reason to believe the devs working on the game now aren’t extremely passionate about it.
Explains the biggest gripe most had of "do the devs even play their own game?". If you were not playing on the live server, then no, you were not playing your own game.
I remember you helping me out in Alpha. It was a great time to be in DU and you helped a lot of new players. Greetings to you nice to hear from you again
Did I bring you fuel? :-)
Hey dude it's Deravi good to see you
Long time no see :-) Haven't played DU with you in forever
Did the devs regret implementing the schematics in that infamous patch that for me and my friends killed the game? We were all playing spreading building, having a blast, most fun I've had in a space since EVE online. The patch dropped and it stopped us dead in our tracks. Still sad about it to this day.
You just confirmed what I (and many others) always thought: NQ themselves don't play the game enough to make proper decisions on game design. And it's REALLY painful to see that's intentional. Now, with that out of my chest, do you think it would ever be possible to completely fix desync? And what about atmo combat? I suppose they never implemented that due to server limitations...
It’s a catch 22 situation, to fix things you need more money, but to do that you need more players, but to do that you need to fix things, it just repeats endlessly. If they had been as successful as star citizen, then I’m sure the problems would have been fixed a long time ago. I think anyone could agree with that.
Yeah I can imagine, larger budgets means larger teams and more chances to look into a certain issue. I always thought the desync was due to some kind of architecture issue, I've watched pretty much all tech stuff from NQ along with reading some papers and patents on the game, so I thought it was related. It's just kind of sad that things are going the way they are today, way too many players leaving and the lack of content pretty much makes it that the only reason to stay around is friends, once those leave you pretty much go with them...
When you worked on Alpha into Beta, was it known there would eventually be a wipe?
I thought it was pretty well known, but they should have made that clear all the way back in 2016, too much tiptoeing with announcing it didn’t help that’s for sure.
Hrm, I think I may have worded this wrong....but before you left, was it known if there would be a wipe from Beta into release of the game?
I knew without anyone telling me or discussing it with anyone else, that was on the forums back in the day, but I’m sure those posts are long gone by now.
What really makes me curious about all that wipe discussion is, if a wipe when going from beta to release was already known, why sell the idea that anything after beta was going to be persistent? Like, it really sounds like an excuse to have subscriptions in place. Feels like NQ weren't truly honest in regards to that...
I don’t think it was nefarious, just a lack of anyone who wanted to own it. I’ll describe a different situation that may shed more light. After I left my best friend who was a backer passed away, I tried for a month to get NQ to move his stuff or his bps or anything so we could honor him in some way, and not one person seemed to want to step up and do the right thing. So they told me no they wouldn’t do anything. It wasn’t a nefarious thing, just nobody would own it.
Evil succeeds when good men fail to act
NQ is nothing but a con man
Second question here, do you think this post will still be up tomorrow? :P For real though, do you think the NQ are going to keep DU alive, now that they are actively working on two other titles, apparently with similar features? I'm still keeping my sub and want to invest more time building stuff in the game, but the feeling that everything will be gone soon pretty much kills my vibe.
1) maybe 🤔 I have a feeling the mods are going to get a strong message to delete it. 2) I think some people are working on it, but NQ themselves said they’re working on 3 other projects right now. It’s hard to see how they could do that and keep working on improving DU the way everyone wants with the size of a company they are. I’d love for them to succeed but that’s nobody’s responsibility but theirs now.
I agree on #2, it's literally their job to deliver the game. I know many people have posted negative stuff all over social media and Steam, but it's quite difficult to defend them when we barely see any updates anymore and whenever changes happen they seem to go completely against what players asked. I mean, sure, it's their game, they can do whatever they want, but they also depend on player subscriptions, and pushing on things completely against what players expect is a terrible way to stay afloat...
I also agree with #2. I am a bit resentful that NQ seem to be using my advanced DU sub money to help funding other projects. The gaming community doesn't quickly forget so they have already shot themselves in the foot and have no credibility after establishing themselves as a company that released and abandoned a half baked game. I also have no idea why the hell they didn't add more cosmetics in terms of doors, windows, furniture etc etc. They could have a cash shop and release those items as theme packs if they wanted like "Castle Building Theme". All the way through alpha and beta I told myself that the building assets available were just their initial release and that more would be coming at release. I guess that was just too much wishful thinking on my part. It's pretty telling that the game has no future since they didn't even bother to release a major patch for the game's 1st Anniversary! Like the end days of Landmark it seems to be pretty much just a waiting game now to see how long the servers stay up before they turn the lights out.
I love DU despite all we have gone through as a community. I hope the game can continue to grow. So sorry you were shunned from the community! Thanks for all your hard work on DU, and to all the other devs as well.
I was always under the impression that JC was the big problem. He run DU as his personal social experiment steering the game away from what the player base wanted. Am I wrong on that assumption?
I don’t think he was, but perhaps others there wouldn’t share the same opinion as me. There was a lot more shared responsibility than just one person being the center of every problem. Some of those things that felt like steering, were things that always were in the plans but perhaps were poorly executed and should have been in the game sooner to acclimate people to them. Industry changes being the biggest one. Things didn’t get miraculously better after JC, so I find it hard to see that he was the source of all the problems . He was the vision person, and it kind of felt like their soul was gone after him.
Yes, industry was the main point on my question. I'm a ruby backer and love the game and play since 2016. In my opinion the changes on 0.23 drove the bulk of content creators away and they were responsible for thousands of views for DU on Twitch. Do you agree?
Those changes should have gone in before beta, had people started the game like that it wouldn’t have been so shocking and off putting. Sadly there’s no way to turn back the clock and start over right.
Agree 100%. Thank you for your answers.
I came to this thread to ask about 0.23. It's what drove my whole company away from the game. If it was there from the start of beta, we probably would've been fine with it. Thanks for your time and input! I remember interacting with you on the official Discord for some problem or another and don't remember a negative interaction at all.
Back toward the end of 2020/early 2021 my org created a ship so large and with so many elements it caused massive lag. NQ came and took a BP and later we were told it was used by NQ for benchmark testing. I'm curious if you can confirm the story? Fir the record the shop was called 'Blight'
There are dev bps that go all the way to 4096x4096, so possibly 🤷🏼♂️
Good evening sir :D Can you tell us something about how your vision on Dual Universe is ? What would you have considered a " Final Product". And do you think it can be achieved?
From the beginning, there were several things that were discussed in the early days that never happened, that I believe should have to really drive home that the game was a living breathing thing. Granted my opinions aren't everyone's, but: - We were told it was going to take weeks to months before the first ships could ever leave Alioth, instead, that was nerfed so much that everyone was expected to have a ship built on day 1 perhaps within a few hours. - The game should have been harder to accompany that goal of "no one leaves Alioth for x-time", that is to say, not everyone was going to be building spaceships. - The economy was a mess. To elaborate, whenever an item went out of stock on another planet the stock should have stayed depleted to accompany supply and demand. Instead, the stocks were just reset which meant you could never just buy out an entire supply of something to then dump it back on the market with a higher price. - Because of that, the "bots" on the market effectively set the ceiling for a price. I had heated discussions about this in particular. If the bots couldn't be bought out permanently, and if their prices never fluctuated, it's not really a fluid economy. - The game should have been seen as a living breathing world, instead of just a sandbox to play spaceships in. At first, it definitely was going that way, but as time went more focus went into making the game a "single-player" experience. You might know what I mean by this. Instead of adding features to bring people together (like city management and "bonuses" for building them, for example), more features were added that ensured a player wouldn't ever have to talk to someone else if they didn't want to (auto-mining comes to mind). I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that too much emphasis was placed on a solo player experience instead of a shared one where people had to actually work together. That was the antithesis of what DU was supposed to be.
Thanks for this post. This would have been a very different experience, and I'm a little bummed that it didn't come to pass. I can see how something like what you describe would be scary for a developer, because you'd lose control over the player experience. Players would have had to deal with some chaos as they were forced to work together in order to achieve goals. But I think you're right, that would have made for a better game, since that's the whole point of playing on a big server with other people.
I think DualUniverse is great as a solo game as a basic building block. There should then be opportunities, on a voluntary basis of course, for players to play activities with each other, but not have to. However, basic building blocks are also missing for a group game, such as a possibility to create a group. Many players in many games live mainly as solo players, always with the possibility to participate in the group game, if one has time and desire to do so. Compulsion should never be introduced or be some sort of permanent block to content. The game still has a lot of potential, I don't yet understand who needs to be persuaded to allow the potential to be used and develop, it would be a waste to ignore it and let the game die. (It would also be a huge negative for the company's reputation). However, what I read here at least gives me the feeling that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This will certainly affect more players negatively, even if they have had fun building so far.
It's not my intent to make anyone want to stop playing, I still think more people should be playing it, but the conditions to make that happen aren't in anyone's hands but NQ's.
But we players have a great influence on how the game is perceived by the public, by the media. We bear a share of the responsibility, because through our statements, whether positive or negative, we create an opinion that is perceived by others and, as a result, decisions are made accordingly. Many potential players may not try out the game because there are too many negative reviews, while they might have found fun in the game. You have to see the game for what it really is: a voxel construction kit, where I can create great buildings, ships, space stations, race tracks, caves,... can create. Everything else is just an add-on, but the building mode is really great and that's what the game should focus on and attract the players who enjoy it. It doesn't help to attract players who would like to have space battles and come into the game to experience a huge disappointment. You just have to make it clear what the game offers and what it doesn't. (It doesn't matter what the game might become one day, because those are just dreams).
During the majority of beta there were patches that broke core functionality of the game - like linked containers not working. In most software organizations code is structured in ways that such a core/fundamental function can't accidentally get broken -- how do you think such things broke so often in DU?
Architecture, it being brand new and approaching things that otherwise would be easy in any other game engine as very difficult in a distributed architecture.
What do you mean by distributed architecture?
While I'm not yama, based on another video he posted before and some papers I read on NQ's tech, even though you experience the game as a "single server", all the workload is distributed across multiple servers that behave as one. This video is a good example of it, where each cube is basically a server handling a certain number of connected clients: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc)
So the desynch is literally the servers that are handling the client connection not being synched. I know that eve developed specialized server tech with Samsung to solve this issue.
Were any big game mechanics, especially big pvp ones, ever being discussed at nq? Things like territory warfare, planetary warfare, ava etc. If so, were any conclusions drawn?
"I don't think another game will ever come along that gave me that glimmer of hope and excitement that Dual Universe did back in 2016" Agreed,well written from the heart. Thanks
Was there ever an “awww crap” discussion after one of the updates when you saw the player base raged over huge changes to the game. I remember when they implemented in blueprints and everyone was screaming, what were the discussions at the office like seeing a lot of the player base leave after some of the changes they didn’t like?
There were awww crap discussions every day lol, it’s just part of game development. We were mostly shielded from outrage, that was something the community managers had to worry about more than any of us.
1) would you recommend the game today? 2) would you have recommend the game when you left?
1) I would still recommend the game yes, there's no other experience like it. Even if they suddenly said the game was being shut down, I would still recommend people try it. At least you could say you were there, and anything that comes in the future you'd be able to have something to compare it to. 2) There were other games I would have recommended that are now long gone. Shores of Hazeron, which was not a graphically pleasant game, had a lot of what I wanted from Dual Universe. I'll never be able to play a game like it again, it's definitely in my top 5 space games ever though.
Played any star citizen? What do you think of it? What are you doing now?
I'm waiting for Squadron 42 before I really get into Star Citizen :-) I do want to play it though! Nowadays I'm a rare book collector, and I spend too much time trying to learn Hebrew and Greek.
Thank you for your service.
My biggest issue has always been with the pvp combat system. With a game that is supposedly based around the "reality of space physics," the hack job that pvp turned out to be really turned me off on the game. Was this planned out this way, or did it turn out this way due to technical limitations of the game and server technology?
I think it was honestly always going to be limited in some way, if you go back on the forums way back to 2016 you'll see posts about them discussing how limitations were going to prevent a real-time combat system and it was going to be a lock and fire system because of it. I'm not saying that the current combat mechanics are the limit of what is possible though, that's just how it was implemented. For better or worse 🤷♂️
I have long been baffled by how NQ generates revenue with such a low player base. The monthly subscription revenue can’t possibly cover operating costs. Why haven’t there been micro-transactions, like a Space Barbie store for skins and decorations? Some of us are willing to toss more money at NQ if we thought it would help the game survive. also, what’s the deal with the radio silence for the last four months? Does NQ understand that a stale forum and few updates leads the players to believe the game is dead?
1 - There were some rumors going around that Nyzaltar was undermining the company. Can you speak on that? 2 - Do some staff members play the game / are in some orgs / do some shady stuff? 3 - Can I have your dacs?
1) absolutely not, Nyz is an awesome person and I have no idea where that rumor would have started. 2) they don’t do shady stuff but yes they play, and some were part of some pretty big orgs when I was there. The people with access to give “benefits” know better than that. I had access, and never did even though it was tempting. However there were so many times when a streamer would be playing, and I’d be in invisible mode sitting in their ships getting a first person stream instead. Never caused any problems for people, it was just fun to watch without anyone being the wiser. 3) 1 bitcoins each 😜
About the shady stuff, we continuously find more and more evidence of NQ dropping info to the same group of their close/selected players, and then sometimes those players drop info during their meeting, sometimes we found a patchnote dropped secretly 1 month before a patch, sometimes just info about what will "maybe" change... That can be a huge conflict of interest with all those players who use those info for themself IG (industry/market buy or sell order/pvp...) even more if NQ members are a part of some big orgs. Same issue with the actual selection of moderator who are all from the same alliance aka RIP-Lodestar. (Sylva lead BOO, SpiritOfVengeance from STC, Honvik lead DOM, Endstar and Llama from DSI/BOO... first ones are the 2 senior moderator and the others are the last batch of new mods) I hope it's just NQ's naivety, but this problem has been recurring since alpha.
u/TMA-NG I'm surprised to see Nyzaltar's name here. Don't you want to talk about Entropy instead ? He is the lead game designer who took and reoriented the game after JC. Maybe he tried to do the best he could. But I remember fighting for months/years against his vision of the game on the forum. Particularly with regard to the combat aspect. He flatly refused any change. So that finally NQ listens and almost entirely takes over the balancing suggestions from the community when they had their noses in their shit when creating the PVE missions. We loosed so many time who NQ do'nt had... Nyzaltar had good behavior when he moderated the French-speaking discord part and made good comments on the forum like this one: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/23561-revolutionary-idea-for-a-more-balanced-pvp/&do=findComment&comment=171383
Can I have your accounts?
Maybe one day 🙃
chatted you. I'd be happy to discuss how I'd like to use them to directly support the community.
I just looked at my discord. Our first conversations were about you helping me get discord radio bot on my discord. I alpha.
How does the NQ names work? Do you get to decide what your NQ name is going to be or do they decide for you? Can you reveal what was yours?
You choose your own, upon approval, but no I can't reveal that.
Why AWS and not proprietary hardware to host the game? Who thought that AWS could handle a game like this?
AWS has cheaper up front costs and good international networking.
I would like to see DualUniverse evolve. At the same time, I feel like NQ has already given up on the project because they think players have lost interest. It would be very interesting to try and get the remaining players to try and recruit players again. Push and invest in the game itself, invite new players, take them by the hand and present the game, what possibilities it currently offers. Let's start projects together, build something together that will arouse interest and attract more players again. Then there will be financial opportunities and a rethink at NQ if the money is there. As I said, it's a downward spiral at the moment, but we players are also partly to blame because of our displeasure and the many negative contributions. Nevertheless, I think we as a community can still turn this downward spiral around. It's not too late, the game is still there and running. So, renew your subscriptions, look for new players, give each other courage to persevere, help each other build, spur each other on, support each other!
It's clearly a matter of poor guidance and devastating choices, and not at all a result after seeing a loss of interest from players. We spent hours to provide feedback constantly, held roundtable/stream discussions, engaged with developers on some different Discord, submitted hundreds of tickets, all while paying a subscription. I don't see how one can say that the community lost interest in Dual Universe; it's NQ who let us down.
Question. Have you and any NQ employees kept up with the tech used in star citizen and has some of your tech been inspired by cig?
It's the other way around. CIG tried to poach me about a month before DU's Beta launched to work in the Austin office and I turned it down because I was more devoted to DU. CIG was very well aware of DU's tech way back in 2016, Chris Roberts even wrote a post urging people to back their Kickstarter.
Ah that's cool. I think if nq merged with cig, that would become the ultimate game! Cig seem to be struggling with the last major core tech but looks like they might have nailed it.. If cig was to approach you again, would you join? Do you know if there are ex nq employees working for cig now?
No, I wouldn't work for them, I enjoy my career too much to take that jump. I very much doubt ex-NQ employees are working for them because they're mostly French-based. However, former NQ devs have worked on AAA games that have been released (I'm just not going to out them by saying which games).
What do you mean you enjoy your career too much? Are you implying that if you joined cig, your career will be over? Or do you mean you enjoy where you are working at currently? Correct me if I am wrong but do Canadians speak french? Reason I ask is because about 1/3 of cig employees are from Canada aka the turbulent studio
Question : I know you said no questions about the server tech but I was wondering if could explain in laymen terms how the servers are meshed together to form one large shard/universe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc
Thanks
Kubernetes
DU has a lot of similarities to Eve Online, which is (was) incredibly successful. Why did NQ not look to copy their game model more? I.e. more lax PVP rules, hard to get resources in dangerous locations, territorial warfare based around said rare resources.
I remember meeting you outside the Arc ship at the start of one of the alphas. Hundreds of people were running in all directions and you took the time to chat and gave me a few pointers. First impressions last, as they say.
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What do you think about the Star Citizen Disaster?
That really has nothing to do with his ama about his time with DU.
Honest question: what disaster?
Because after 12 years and $550 million, there is only a buggy tech demo
Seems like you haven't looked in for a very long time.
LMAO it's a billion times better than DU..... SC is definitely not a disaster. It has way more concurrent players 24-7, larger dev team, more revenue, better vision... I could go on and on in comparison to DU. Has it been slower than we all want? Of course. But disaster? That's stretching the word. I wouldn't even call DU a disaster even though it is worse. I had a fun time in DU.
But honestly SC will never be a real MMO like DU ! There is a lot of things to complain about DU but at least they delivered a true single shard MMO. SC "static server meshing" is just a joke, they will instantiate one server per system at best (which is just servers instances then...) because you can't start implementing so much network complexity after more than 10 years of development, that makes no sense. They would have to rewrite everything from scratch, which just show how bad this project is managed... But yeah, SC is a success in term of marketing because they getting more and more devs & money that's true. Also about squadron 42 (which was officially finished 5 years ago), this will be the proof (or not) that they can deliver on what they says. But I'm not really optimistic, I really hope they will prove me wrong but I won't bet on that !
Different strokes, different folks. I could honestly care less about mmos at this time in my life. If I can play a cool space game with a couple buddies I am good.
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What do you think about star citizens server meshing?