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

Well you echo the feelings of many of us. I can understand someone not giving an exact date, but we are not being given an estimate even. It is really worrisome when the devs seem to treat 'not talking about release date' as a more important goal than the game itself. And that last sentence is EXACTLY what is happening, devs that appear and act more worried about keeping things secret than developing a great game.

Chucklefish, this is the message you send us. I don't care what you say, this is what it looks and feels like. If you don't like that then prove this statement wrong. Cryptic daily updates that mention nothing on actual progress (hey we did something today!) are not the solution to the problem. We are not needy, it's just you're giving the wrong medicine to what ills us. Antibiotics never work for the flu.

 

Ask Lobo. He's the one making them for us.

 

Thank ya, here, have a cookie! :')

 

Except they've alreadty said the full release is not coming this year but the Beta is for sure =_= Christ you guys love to kick up a stink without doing your homework

 

"If you guys can't give us a release date, at least give us a weekly or daily update that tells us what you're working on!"
"Okay, we'll give you guys daily updates."
"Wow, you guys are only giving us daily updates instead of giving us a release date or estimate date."

I'm personally glad they spend less time talking about a release date and more time working towards one. But then again...the law of community. What they do to appease a part of the community will upset another part. But hey, given how the community when reacts when an estimated time frame passes, I'd be super hesitant to try and pull numbers out of my ass just to appease someone who demands an estimate. Because we've seen how people react when an estimated time frame turns out to be inaccurate. But who knows, maybe the right answer is to spend more time trying to correctly divine a release date instead of actually working on getting the game to the date they're trying so hard to predict to appease the people who demand it. I like how you say "worried about keeping things secret." No, they're worried about the backlash a fraction of the community gives when an estimate is proven wrong. I like how you imply they're more worried about keeping things secret than developing a great game, when people demand they spend more time trying to guess release dates, interact with the community, update this, do that, daily updates, answer every question, browse every thread, etc, etc. Of all the things they're worried about, keeping secrets isn't one of them. It's not a conspiracy, they don't know the date and are "keeping it secret." No, they're just working on the game. And I think that's the best course of action; work on the damn game and spend less time screwing around with arbitrary dates that people demand.

In my opinion, they should focus on developing the game, and less on trying to correctly read the stars and use gypsy magic in order to give a completely accurate release date. Because we all know how people are going to react if the estimated release date they're forced, guilt-tripped, threatened, provoked, persuaded, pleaded, tricked, or intimidated into giving turns out to be incorrect. Damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Ultimately, at this point in time, the best thing they could do is work on the game as much as they can.

Also, I like how few people realize that the Beta is being worked on intensely to make it so that the players have a large amount of things to do in the beta to tide them over to release. I'm not looking forward to the release; I'm looking forward to Beta. Because I'm fairly sure I'll play Beta until release comes out anyway, and I'm sure a great many other people will too. People criticize them for working too hard on the beta, saying "just release us something now," but what they often fail to realize is that Beta is essentially the bridge between now and release. Once Beta comes out, we will have Starbound to play until Starbound comes out with more Starbound to play. Or are people just obsessed with release because it is "official"? That seems to be a major factor as well. The better they make the beta, and the more content they put into the beta, the more we'll have to do until the game officially releases. So I'm glad they're putting effort into the beta, instead of releasing a tiny tech demo to serve as a quick-fix for people who need their starbound fix now. We all know, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if they released to us the same thing they released to the Yogscast, we would have people complaining that it wasn't long enough, and there wasn't enough to do. We all know it would happen. And then people would demand more, people would talk about how insignificant of an amount of gameplay it contained, and then they'd want daily patches instead of daily updates, and the devs would spend more time making sure the beta has more content, etc, etc. The beta is the bridge.

A lot of people think they're waiting for release, but really, they're waiting for Beta. And it's coming. I'm glad they're putting so much effort into the beta. Since people like to throw the word minecraft a lot, and how their "give us a tiny amount of stuff to do and then large patches every so often to keep it updated" statements... A lot of Minecraft's "updates" for Betas added an insignificantly small amount of content. Sure, people were content, but because they had nothing else. People need to remember that going from Beta to release is probably a lot easier than going from concept to Beta. In my mind, and with other games I've followed development on...each game's development lifespan has "quick" stages, and "slow" stages.

<-------------------------------------------X---------------------X----------------------------------------------X------------------------X-------------------------------------------------------------------->

Concept to Alpha / Tech Demo: This is one of the hardest parts of the game's dev lifespan. Taking ideas from your head and giving them a physical form. Translating mere thoughts into tangible things.
Tech Demo / Alpha to Beta: This is a bit easier than the previous stage. Taking things and systems you've put into place, and tweaking them to balance, etc. Make it more than just "playable." Start to pull it together into a cohesive, singular game. Get the foundations down, and make sure it supports the structure of the game. (We're at this stage, right now, but Chucklefish is electing to elongate this stage in order to provide a lot more foundation, and to tide many people over until the full release.)
Beta to release: Take community feedback from the beta, fix a lot of the bugs, make necessary balance changes, add quality of life improvements, if needed. By making the beta more substantial now, they're cutting down a lot of the work required in this phase. And trust me, it can take a huge amount of work. Their decision to make the beta more substantial also gives the player more things to enjoy along the way, as well.
Release and beyond: Okay, so the game is released. The foundations are sturdy, the structure is built...additions. More content. Keeping the game alive longer. Etc, etc. We don't need to get into this phase right now, anyway.

So, while not the most exciting diagram ever, Chucklefish doing a lot of the work in this phase will reduce the work they need to do in other phases. It's very hard to accurately give dates, and the community responds (generally) very negatively when an estimate is wrong. People have told them not to give estimates, not to pull numbers and dates out of their asses, or the community will be upset when said dates are wrong. But now we have people who feel as if it's a conspiracy to keep community in the dark. By doing A, they're directly upsetting B. By doing B, they're directly hurting A. They can't please everyone. It's both impossible and completely stupid to try. Their best bet is to simply work on the game. I'm sorry if users feel like they're being shut out, or kept in the dark, but they have absolutely nothing to gain by doing something like that. They aren't making an elaborate game and showing it off at conventions simply as some sort of scam or elaborate ruse. I mean come on, be realistic here.

In short, or not so short, the best way to please the majority of the community is to just work on the game. The game will be ready when it's ready, beta will be ready when it's ready. They should only give estimates when they feel absolutely confident, (as close to 100% confident as possible) and not a moment before. Many people complaining about beta taking a long time to get to us will enjoy it even more with the extra work they've put into it. They're making sure the playerbase has a lot to tide them over until release. That's why I say most people aren't waiting for "Official" release. They're waiting for Beta.From how things are looking, Beta is going to last an incredibly long time, and it's coming in the next couple months...so that's always a plus to me.

 

Because in /no way/ could they do updates to the beta with content they add in, right Sokina?
Beta because you know exactly how they will handle it - will have to last until release without /absolutely anything being done to it/, no patches at /all/ for buxfixes or adding things in to test eh?
Oh wait no.. they are probably going to add in things between now and release aren't they? At the least fixs.. at the most changes based on feedback I mean why have a beta at all if not for that?

Well unless its not a beta and just an over-glorified demo..

 

Thats great, but its also completely false. Blizzard is insanely successful and the people that consider it on its way to death are by far the minority.

EDIT: I'll just add.

For the most part I agree with your points, but I completely disagree on the idea that Chucklefish should provide a release date. They've already tried it, they are VERY bad at giving estimates, and they would just be hurting themselves if they were to try and give another one. The simple fact of the matter is that they don't know when they will be done, why? I don't know, personally I think its because they don't know what they want done by a full release.

Whatever the reason, giving a release date would be counter productive. Their best course of action now is to make absolutely sure without a shadow of a doubt that the beta makes it by the end of 2013 and they leave 2014 open for a full release. This means that if getting 10 tiers for beta proves too difficult, they should stop at a reasonable number and polish what is already implemented.

If I were to suggest a game plan, I'd suggest releasing a beta product with 4/5 tiers relatively complete, and then release a tier per month or so (giving themselves a strict deadline). As opposed to a product with 4/5 tiers to be completed some unknown time in the future.

 

i think Sokina is right... be patient guys it will come out when it's time to
yeah right i'm also desperately waiting for the Game but hey... they are working on it and as long as the daily updates are coming, i know they are making progress on it.

(don't blame my bad english if it is bad, i'm just a german fangirl )

 

Man I leave the forums for a couple months and things have gotten pretty crazy, c'mon guys, the devs are working hard! Can't you wait a little longer for beta?
In the meantime, take a page from Vash's book, love and peace!

 

They already said that beta would release no matter what in multiple areas. They have a checklist of what they want to finish and that must be finished first.
Even if they don't finish that I bet they would still release beta.

 

Adding content and all is great, but what I'm expecting to go wrong with beta release is different people on different systems.

I expect many people having issues because there are so many people running different systems with different operating systems. And then they won't just have to fix bugs, but also issues with different systems; that means the people who are having issues playing the game on different operating systems or computer will have to wait even longer to play the demo.

Why not release a tiny demo to see how the game runs? Just something like.. Jump, walk, hit, interact. A small room where you can do those games to test if the beta will run fine.

A game called cube world did a similar thing, the title screen had the game running in the background; many people found out they had issues running the game before buying it and I think that helps.

 

What you could do is change the pre-order page to not say "Estimated Release: 2013" for the full game, since this is no longer true. Don't want people to make a missinformed purchase, now do we?

 

True. I think you've just volunteered to PM Molly to let her know about it, and request a change.

 

It has been done. Tough it is somewhat disconcerting that they seemingly have to be reminded to update product information on such a central page.

 

Molly did update the pages a week or two ago, and she may have missed it. It happens occasionally - I'm told it's a consequence of being merely human.

The alternative is that she and CF think that the beta counts as release, so left it as is. Personally I would prefer 'release' to mean full release rather than beta, as you clearly also do, but it is only an opinion.

 

Chucklefish!You do not believe.

 

Since we're all so desperate for a "release" date, may I ask nicely about the Roadmap? It's been a while

 

It was updated last month. Get your info updated before you ask for the Roadmap.

 

For those who still have delusions about beta this year, quote from update for 7 Oct:

Nice, Chucklefish, very very nice...