Important BETA RELEASE DISCUSSION - DECEMBER 4TH (*ALL* beta discussion goes here. Other threads deleted)

*walks in with a long stick*

*pokes angry people with long stick*

*yells "Beta!"*

*runs*

 

Well said!
i'd like to recap with all of you what is being said so far, and i'd like for people to add to this content with their own considerations in an organized manner, if they can.
( i might have missed some points, please let me know if you can find them)

Starbound is being delayed a bit according to some people, a lot according to others, not at all according to others who state we can only speak of delay after the end of the year.
(skip to * if you don't read long texts, but don't expect to be able to criticize my words if you don't )

Some believe starbound isn't respecting users because the users paid for something they are not being given. Personally i believe this is not true, and i will explain why.
When buying something, anywhere or anything, you are promised something under certain conditions, and it is the seller's duty to follow those conditions to the letter.
How does this apply to starbound? Here we go:
We preordered the game, the exchange was money for product ToBeReleased. A pre-order. Technically, there were no other rules. I don't recall any rules about the game being supposed to come out this year or the next. Why should i be right? Take a CLOSE look at starbound pre-order page:
In the intro it says stuff about preorders speeding up development time and the beta coming out in 2013.
In the FAQ it says

Now, for the fun part, in the "contract" there is NO mention of starbound coming out at ANY time. There are "Estimated" times, and "TBA" times. And this is only directly on the CF page, because inside the true purchase form (Steam's) it says just

.

SO. No, to be completely correct none of use has ANY right to have the game any time soon, but we can all get a refund.
This may put CF in negative spotlight, but i don't think so: developers knew their project was ambituous so when they opened preorders they were saying-
"listen FRIEND, you give me some money now and i tell ya ill do everything i can to make the game come out this year, ya can be sure! ill even give you a discount!"
but also
"dear CUSTOMER, this game is a product not yet released, therefore under the current state of development we are offering you the switch to prepurchase under a lower price than release a product which will be released in the future. You will be given, though, the right to have immediate full access to 'a soundtrack' of the game". in fact, we have soundtrack downloads available!
The latter, is the legally recognized one. No mention of ETAs (estimated does not count).
Developers, as i was saying, needed to protect themselves under a legal perspective, but at the same time wanted to let us know they would do their best to have this game out by the end of this year.

Also if you always buy hotdogs at your favorite hotdog stand and one day the "hotdog-man" decides hotdogs will cost 2$ more and will all contain mayonnaise, can you do something about this?
NO, you have no right over this and may not complain about the service "being correct", you may complain about it with other customers, thought, because it would be "wrong" for the seller's own conscience, and may force the seller to revert back to old rules only by convincing other customers to stop buying hotdogs. Or the seller may continue to sell the hotdogs forever the way he pleases (as long as it doesn't break the law).

SOO. * What can we learn from this?
Well, the rules in this thread have to change a bit now:
WE CANNOT expect the game to come out this year or the next (the statements "beta will never come out this year" have NO meaning under legal terms, and we would not have been tricked by the devs if it didn't), BUT WE CAN comment on the devs' "wastin time", WITHOUT expecting to be right under any "rules" but only "ethical behaviour" (so ethical behaviour is what contestors must try to tackle if they wish to criticize devs, and of course they need to have concrete evidence as why devs would be "wastin time" or other things)
WE CANNOT force the devs to take on any action we whish, the product is their own and they have ALL rights about its development and all other details, BUT WE have power over the money we spent (so those not in favour of CF's sale mechanism can fight it by getting refunds).

This is why i believe devs haven't been at all wrong about the release of this game, they said they would try their best, and they are also coherent to what they told as "as friends" that they would try to get beta out this year (at least they say it will most surely come out before 2014).
I believe they have acted completely-correctly, but have made a few mistakes in the "handling" of customer services. They will surely be more catious in the future.

On the 'other side of things', devs should take their time trying to get a good game out. If they were to get a non working beta out now, it would not be a game in beta (a beta is everything that needed to be implemented was, but with a few bugs we need to discover) because if they KNOW there are bugs, they cannot release the game for beta because it would fight the reason to get beta out so they can find bugs faster.
IF they were to get the beta out JUST to satisfy the customers upon having waited so much, it would be completely stupid because if the beta would not work it would not be much of a "satisfaction" and it would probably make more customers unhappy than happy.
IF the devs are done with development but are still working on "update" mechanisms, the more time they spend on the preparation of those, the faster they will actually be when put into action, therefore doing us all a big favor when beta comes out, and also for release.
IF the devs have done everything they needed to do then they are just teasing us and there isn't much we can do about it except get a refund or complain about it (and this can ONLY be done if we have evidence, otherwise we would be wrong in the first place upon making such sort of statements).
IF the devs haven't done much since they started the pre-purchasal campaign, we can only hope they get to work.

SO, sorry for the wall o text again, but this had to be said because many are pretending it is actually our right to get a game out this year and that we can not only complain about it but also get angry about it because we are not being respected as customers. At the MOST, what these sort of guys can say is that we are not being respected as loyal customers, which cannot be really said because the game isn't old at all (has never been released) and the company itself is young.
Thank you, reply with answers well supported by logic please! And i meant to offend no one in the making of this post

 

I'll pretend I never saw this post
Thank you for the info, though

 

I literally love this person

 

Your argument has some flaws.

First of all we pre-ordered under the premise of having a full game delivered this year. That isn't a price change /after/ a sale, its terms changed in the middle of purchase without full goods delivered. If you go back to a previous post of mine I've shown the developers did indeed promise a full release in 2013 no matter what (paraphrasing). We do indeed have a right for what we paid money for - the full game at the end of 2013, something promoted by the faq when the game was up for preorder for the longest time until they changed the wording.

Edit: Link to source links, knew I had listed the wayback machine one somewhere.

http://community.playstarbound.com/...r-threads-deleted.25665/page-144#post-1287147

l cannot stress how important that is. Your primary case is made using the edited information which has been changed the last two months and did not state that at time of most peoples preorder. Check the wayback machine webpage for how they intended it. There wasn't even going to be a beta at first. During which they promised us full release in 2013 so you are just wrong in that. No they didn't call it full release, they didn't have a difference between versions at that point and meant the whole game. It was always meant to be out by now and sold ahead of time under the premise of it being completely out by the end of the year.

... every time they made this assurance they where not talking about beta but the full game. Something repeatedly told us as customers not friends. Also in various places as well that haven't been saved but did happen.

People are actually being extremely tolerant customers settling for second best, and as well a second best that doesn't have to be complete to function and so could have been put out reasonably well before this.

You are coming in trying to act like this is some form of debate but it isn't as well. This is a case of people having issues with the developers who have made mistakes and wish to see them correct these mistakes. They want to see Chucklefish improve, so telling them their only primary options are refunds is not true. They will likely anyway at the end of 2013.(Guess why.) You're putting the weight of this on the consumer for being dissatisfied and submitting improvement suggestions and criticism rather then take their business elsewhere. Which in a way you're almost undermining Chucklefish, as that encourages people to get refunds which do cost them more then the price of the sale. If everyone listened to you then the publisher would be in a bad situation. One I don't think any of us really care to see them in despite having let those of us with criticisms down in some ways.

I would much rather see them continue, release beta in a more timely fashion, and improve on future projects.

 

Most people don´t really care about someone asking for refund. So he is wasting his time.

 

Well said - I just want to add that if you grant them that this was indeed a "kickstarter" type of scenario - since when has it become okay even with kickstarter to fail to deliver on your work? However this is conceding far too much ground because the Pre-Order was a hard transaction and the selling point under the premise of 2013 full release.

At this point this doesn't really need to be said and it just becomes a game of semantics.

I do think they will make the 2013 beta release, but god damn are they REALLY pushing the whole "2013" concept. By the way, the pre-orders were said would have helped "speed up" 2013 release - strange how it seemed to have the complete opposite effect...

 

because 2 million can buy an awful lot of mañana .

 

Star* Citizen isn't coming out this December. The dogfighting module is. SC isn't slated for releasee till late 2014, early 2015.

 

i would like to not have to say that again. You don't really have to think that much to see that the game is coming faster than it would. If it wasn't for pre-orders they would have to work on starbound just on their free time, that means that we would'nt see the beta released on the end of this year\start of the next year, it would actually be released on the years to come.

 

It still remains that preorder money did not accelerate any release in the way promoted.

They repeatedly claimed we would get a faster result, as in -before- the last bit of 2013. Only recently have they changed their stance to we would get a "better" one as we approached this deadline and realized they couldn't live up to that claim. Much less get full release to us. (If this was from overestimating, changes found necessary, what some people claim on creep, we don't know.)

That doesn't change the original intent. They have admitted to making a mistake about it, having repeatedly said they expected it out sooner. It failed to do so in the way they wanted and claimed, and we wanted.

It may have helped in other ways (Quality, yes speed overall but not what was presented, help in promoting it, ect.), but not the way presented and arguably intended by them. It didn't work within their own expectations that working full time on it would do, or ours despite the volume of it, for whatever reasons.

Edit: Made this a hair more clear.

 

Sorry* Xander, you don't have enough insider information to make that claim. They didn't hit their projected goals for release, and are still in the process of trying to hit this current goal for beta. That much is true.

But as far as how the money has benefited the development and the speed of release, without knowing where they were exactly before funding and where they are now, we can only assume that our money has helped further development in both speed and in content. As far as the way it's presented, I don't know where you're coming from here. What do you mean by this?

Anyway, without knowing what would happen if the wouldn't have received the money, the claim that the money hasn't increased development speed is just pure speculation.

 

i see, but still, fatalbertlamont stated that the preorders seemed to have the opposite effect (slowed down the proccess). I was just saying that this statement is wrong, it didn't delay any further the process of making the game, it actually made it come faster

 

in what universe is a game releas changing from 2013 to 2014, faster thanks to pro-orders

 

In the long term no. In the short term it is possible it could have. We can't know for certain, but we do know something has caused them to repeatedly miss their own projections. Many people have claimed feature creep as a likely culprate since they one slated a release estimate around the end of 2012. I'm not sure if I belive that is happening but there is an issue regardless that things obviously haven't run acording to plan.

Everything I have said can be backed up by Mollys own words here.
http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/current-dev-responses-general.30039/

Specificly:
----
When Q1 2013 came around and the game still wasn't in quite the state we wanted it to be in, we got pretty stressed out. The whole team had been working their butts off for over a year and lots of them were living off of savings, which they were starting to run out of. Other people were in a position where they were going to have to take a full-time job, severely limiting their time to work on Starbound. That would have been preeeetty disastrous.

People had been asking us to open up pre-orders for a long time. The idea that we might not make it to full release by the end of 2013 seemed ludicrous, and we really needed the funds to keep our team afloat. So, we decided to open up pre-orders with the promise that the full game would be out this year, confident that that was the case so long as the team could keep working full time.
----

Again if they intended it to be out in 2013, then by assuring us preordering would speed development, that obviously meant it they where promoting it as coming sooner then the end of the year. Maybe not intentionally, but they didn't start attempting to correct this misunderstanding until much later. So at the least its questionable them using the wording as they did and why.

 

If there's anything that needs to stop its picking apart every detail in every post someone makes with our seriouscaps on.
CLEARLY opposite effect is an exaggeration, You're smart enough to know that. You know that what he means is that as a consumer it doesn't feel like the money helped speed up anything considering the full release has been pushed back into 2014, and we have a month left for a beta launch, But he well knows that the money is in-fact helping in some way and has had a positive influence regardless of how big or small. [i49, their huge marketing campaign wouldn't of been possible without preorders, which in turn brought in more sales to help keep them out of fulltime jobs which supposedly helps]

You really don't need to go out of your way to say "HEY GUYS, THIS ISNT RIGHT GUYS, NO NOT IN THE SLIGHEST".
pls.
Just pls.

 

The same universe where pre-orders keep it from becoming a 2015, 2016, or potentially a 2017 release.

This is the release date we're getting with them working full time on this game. Without pre-orders, they'd be holding other jobs to pay the bills and get food, which would slow down work even further.

 

It doesn't appear to me that she said anything about opening pre-order to speed development. On the contrary, she appears to have clearly stated that they opened pre-order to avoid the slow-down of development that would naturally occur if devs had to go out and get jobs (i.e. "Speeding Up" <> "Not Slowing Down.")

I tend to look at this from a different angle: I paid my $15, and I got over 4 hours of really superb music. Realistically, if I had found that music on my own and purchased it for $15, I would be extremely happy with the value received for my purchase, because, when you compare the sheer amount of music here compared to what you get for $9.99 in iTunes, it's a pretty darn good value. So, while I am certainly anxious to play the game, I feel I've already gotten my money's worth. I don't really see the point in engaging in 200+ pages of faux legal arguments and finger pointing, but then, I've got other stuff to do. It's something to ponder though: some of these comments seem, from my perspective, terribly privileged. To be moaning this much about wanting to play a game that isn't ready yet seems... a bit overdone? It's not my place to tell other people they can't complain, and if someone honestly feels they've been cheated somehow, then so be it. But most people here just seem to want to play the game, really, REALLY badly, and the emotion is clouding their senses

 

I'm not contesting any of that. What I'm saying is that we can only assume that the funds that we gave the devs for the game is being used to further progress its development where it would have not otherwise. Or rather, continue steady development instead of them developing it when they can.

In that very same link you posted here, it is said:
----
I'm not saying you think this, but there seems to be this strange idea that there's some sort of magical development machine that you stick funds into and code comes out. What "supporting development" means is allowing us to fund the team's continued work on the game. Which is exaaaactly what's happened.
----

The funds have allowed them to continue development, thus the game will be coming to us faster than if we had not. You can't say that the funds didn't accelerate (EDIT: in relation to if they had not received funds) development when A.) all signs point to yes, it did and B.) we have no real baring on the project to say otherwise.

 

in the world that it could have been changed to 2020 due to it being a subjob

edit:

well, clearly im being misunderstood here. I'm not being this way man, all i did was say that this one part of his statement was wrong and pointed out why, i didn't understand why all this hate towards my post.

If i didn't explain right, sorry, ill try to explain better what i meant: I know that the full release was pushed to 2014, but if it wasn't for pre-orders it would be pushed even further. In somewhere on this forum, tyi stated they worked on the game after they got home from their other job. I would say that they could work something like 2 hours a day on starbound. Now that they opened pre-orders they quit their other jobs to work full time on starbound. Saying that the pre-orders didn't accelerate the proccess, or even worse, slowed down doesn't even make sense.

i didn't mean to offend anyone here, but the way that misho answered me clearly show that i did in some way, so i'm sorry.